[In The Collected Stories of Sean O'Faolain, Vol. 3] Sean O'Faolain proves himself yet again a master of narrative, a writer whose eyes select, whose ears record and whose insights illuminate and enrich our understanding, and stir our emotional sympathy while appealing to our intellectual understanding. O'Faolain is also an imaginative interpreter of the men, women, children and adolescents whom he invents and draws with such an apparent ease, so evocatively and so convincingly. Some of his stories remain in the memory; they compel us as we read them to envisage the characters in all their diversity, to give them voices, to dress and, at times, undress them. And with the gently increasing insistence of the author we come, through contemplating them, to an increased awareness of the complexities of life, of its mingled joys and frustrations, of the courage that informs its continuance….

O'Faolain has a tolerance for...