Written with a precision, flair, and wit that would become her trademark, Montreal Standard Time is journalism of the first order. Taken together, the pieces create a remarkable portrait of Montreal in the eventful years during and after WW2, and of a young woman, fiercely independent and politically active, making her way through it. The book also corrects a long-standing gap in the Gallant oeuvre. Her celebrated reporting on the student riots in Paris in 1968 and on the Gabrielle Russier case are brilliant examples of her in-depth journalism. But that, and her insightful reviews and occasional pieces, have already been collected. Her earliest reporting from The Montreal Standard, however, has never circulated or appeared in book form.

Edited by Neil Besner, Marta Dvorak, and Bill Richardson, with a preface by Mary K. MacLeod, Montreal Standard Time is indispensable not only for the light it throws on Gallant’s time and place, but in how it reveals a major writer coming into her powers.