Miss Boyle is a storyteller, a superb one; by and large, the best in this country, and one of the best now living. This somewhat belated point of view concerning her work emerges clearly, it seems to me, in this present volume of her collected tales [Thirty Stories], especially as they have been arranged chronologically and according to background; according, that is, to the country in which they are laid….

[The] early stories are mostly interesting as a study in the emergence of an artist; an artist with a beautiful command of language, a unique gift for striking metaphor, granted as a rule only to poets, and a passionate, impelling drive. An artist, original, rebellious, and bitterly observant…. On the whole, these stories are not completely successful. That was the way they struck me when I first read them many years ago; and that is the way all...