In … A Fine and Private Place, Morley Callaghan writes in the familiar parables that have marked his work since his first published novel came out in 1928. He is concerned with the conscience, the moral part of humanity, the part that makes man different from the animals and more interesting to watch. Yet throughout his long career he has observed people as though they were beasts at play. He records our battles, our coupling, our struggles for supremacy, our defeats. He is delighted to show how men behave badly in a social world of their own creation. He does this with tightly organized stories that are almost Biblical in their spare directness. From Strange Fugitive, a working class Decline and Fall, through novels like the gallows-obsessed It's Never Over and They Shall Inherit the Earth to the more familiar The Loved and the Lost, Callaghan marshals his people in...