This story from Mavis Gallant deals with the experiences of a Canadian college student “banished” to Europe by her strict father to end an affair with a married professor. While there, she falls prey to a troubled older man who appears practiced in picking up vulnerable young woman and discarding them immediately something happens that is not to his liking. Their time together, living in his “tunnel-like” room in the garden of an eccentric, thoroughly dislikeable British couple, is not what she expected. Themes: amoureuse mal placé (misplaced love), independence, exploitation, betrayal, cruelty, politics, aging, identity.
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