ABSTRACT
In November 1981 Mavis Gallant returned to do a cross-country tour to promote her first collection of Canadian stories and was back as writer in residence at the Toronto University 1984. Her's is certainly Canadian fiction with a difference, interesting to readers outside Canada precisely because she is a Canadian expatriate, but not 'expatriot' as she insists in her introduction to Home Truths. Though no story in the volume called 'Home Truths' yet 'telling a few home truths' is what it is about, for she takes a very critical look at 'Canadian' and its usefulness as a descriptive term just as she scrutinizes Canadian ideals of nationalism, cultural heritage, multi-ethnicity and the idea of 'home' itself. Mavis Gallant is one of the few Canadian writers whose craft of fiction critics discuss and not its content, partly because of the way she writes but also because she eludes normal Canadian categories.
