October 1961
Here is a delectable collection of stories by the author who seems to me just about the best living exponent of this elusive art. The title story is the major work, showing, apparently casually, a wonderfully clear and particular picture of a family in London faced with the return of their Hilda after thirteen years in the Far East and two marriages. Hilda, who is an exotic enigma to all of them, arouses curiosity, envy, protection and excitement - all lubricated with their various family relations to her. They never discover her, they never see how much she has discovered them, and when she goes they are left with their distant speculations - she is again a chronic topic of family conversation. I think I liked The Wheelbarrow best, as it has a character fraught with layers of innocence and guilt at which Mr. Pritchett excels, but there are several fascinating portraits in other stories - an accountant suffering from a film star brother, a very old and redundant gentleman who has fallen back upon food; a woman living on the telephone and calamity who collects a pulverising bore with whom to bank her best memories, etc. There is a continuous sense of the ridiculous in this writing, but the author also keeps a kindly eye on the truth about his people, so that they are never simply comic inventions; while you are laughing at them, you also entirely see what they mean. The narratives are studded with exact observation, and the dialogue and constructions are so good that one cannot think why Mr. Pritchett does not write some one-act plays.