In Youth is Pleasure by Mavis Gallant (Short Fiction Audio Single) narrated by Margot Dionne
In Youth is Pleasure
In Youth is Pleasure first appeared in The New Yorker, November 24, 1975, p. 46.
The New Yorker
Author writes about herself as a young woman of 18, Linnet, returning to Montreal, her birthplace, from New York, where she'd been living and going to school. Tells about how at the age of fifteen she became indifferent to her mother. Her father, who was English, died when she was ten years old, but she had been told that he was in England. She found out the truth when she was 13 by provoking an adult to tell her. She stays with her old nurse, Olivia, upon her return to Montreal. Olivia was surprised to see her, for she thought she was dead. Linnet looked up her father's friends to determine the circumstances of his death. They tell her different stories. One says that he was dying of tuberculosis of the spine and started back to England to de but never made it; another said that he shot himself in public; another said that he died at sea and that a gun was found in his luggage. Accompanying the story are the thoughts of a young woman growing up.
