THE ROAD PAST ALTAMONT by Gabrielle...

THE ROAD PAST ALTAMONT by Gabrielle Roy, translated from the French by Joyce Marshall (Bison: $7.95; 146 pp.) and STREET OF RICHES by Gabrielle Roy, translated from the French by Harry Binsse (Bison: $8.95; 246 pp.). The gently elegiac tone of these two books of stories and sketches by the popular Canadian writer suggests a mixture of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Roy’s semi-autobiographical work focuses on a French-Canadian family living at the outskirts of Winnipeg in the early 20th Century. Beyond their yard stretch the vast plains of Manitoba, whose emptiness delineates their lives. “The Road Past Altamont” describes how the narrator’s perceptions of her mother and grandmother shift over time. In one moving passage, Roy describes a child’s awe at her grandmother’s ability to craft a doll from household odds and ends: “For a long time I was haunted by the idea that it could not possibly be a man who made the world. But perhaps it was an old woman with extremely capable hands.” “Street of Riches” expands the vision to encompass the narrator’s first experiences in the world beyond her small provincial city.