If Miss Bagnold had chosen that her heroine [in 'The Happy Foreigner'] should lead the most sheltered and protected life that is left for a young woman to endure, we are confident that there would have blossomed within its narrow boundaries flowers as rich and as delicate as those which Fanny gathered on the strange roads of France. For she understands how it is vain to seek adventure unless there is the capacity for adventure within us…. 'The Happy Foreigner' exists for a proof of how she ventured, and to tell how great was her reward. (p. 232)

Fanny, an English girl, goes to France at the end of the war and drives a car for the French Army. She falls in love, but it comes to nothing, and the end might be the beginning. That is all. Who Fanny is, what her life has been up till the...