Volume 28, Number 8 · May 14, 1981
The Power of the Unstated
By Patricia Craig
The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
Knopf, 782 pp., $17.95
Elizabeth Bowen developed early an acute vision of what the short story should, and should not, do. 'Poetic tautness and clarity' she saw were essential ingredients, along with a single theme or mood which is pitched in a fairly high key. The story, with its brief span, cannot accommodate those troughs of slackness which properly separate the moments of climax in a novel. It should not contain anything which might 'weaken, detract from, or blur the central, single effect.'
Review, 2384 words
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