Shirley Hazzard is … stylish but she … writes with restraint, preferring understatement and implication to explanation and assertion. The controlled sensitivity of her prose gives even to her love stories a slightly detached air. We share the heroine's consciousness, through which the story comes to us, without wanting to identify with her. The artistic detachment is, of course, more obvious in the satirical People in Glass Houses. But, whether in satirical vein or not, Shirley Hazzard is an eminently quotable writer…. (p. 31)

Shirley Hazzard's first book, Cliffs of Fall, reveals an outstanding talent for the short story….

The main subject of this volume (and of Shirley Hazzard's novels too) is love. The point of view is usually the woman's, the source of tension the difference between man and woman in their attitude towards love. Young love is innocent and vulnerable; the women in these stories, older in experience, know...