[...] Gallant, one suspects, similarly sees and meets people and then invents what becomes a precise landscape of their world. There is no vanity or self-aggrandizement in her process and the portraits are always tough as well as generous. For instance her satire is sharp in “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street,” and yet she will take us beyond that satire to feel compassion for a character we would never have believed could be sympathetic. The tenderness does not replace or override the earlier portrait, Peter is still pathetic, but now there is that one moment where something happened, where the man's awareness of human nature was suddenly profound.