[Selected Stories] is great fun [and,] although O'Faolain himself has written of peasants and petits fonctionnaires, he approaches genius in his portrayal of Irish women. In half a dozen of these stories, where he allows himself enough space to escape from the professional knowingness of a story like "Two of a Kind", he brings the truth of a sexual relationship to life. "Lovers of the Lake", "Dividends" and "In the Bosom of the Country" are the calm triumphs of a writer who, having started as one whom Yeats would have called a "Cork realist", has transcended [provincialism] … without abandoning Ireland as his theme. After his years in the IRA, O'Faolain discovered that "the combination of an acquisitive middle class and a vigorous and uncultivated church meant that the fight—for a republic as I understood it—had ended in total defeat". The effects of this defeat are everywhere...