The majority of [the stories in The Best of Rhys Davies] are told with a wrily humorous appreciation of the lapses into disorder to which even the most disciplined lives are sometimes subject. People fall far, they fall unexpectedly and they fall funnily; but they rarely do themselves or others lasting injury. But there are two masterly pieces in which the tone is graver and the outcome less jokey. In 'The Chosen One' one of those sullen uncomfortably passionate young men who so often appear in Davies's work is so far baited by the imperious eccentric who owns his rented cottage, that he is eventually driven to murder her. In the other, 'I Will Keep Her Company', an old man marooned in his isolated home by a blizzard, maintains a lonely vigil by the corpse of his wife, while a busy-body district-nurse attempts to organise his rescue.

The...