SOURCE: "The Short Stories," in William Sansom, Twayne Publishers, 1980, pp. 105-30.

Chalpin is an educator and critic. In the following excerpt from her book on Sansom, she groups the author's stories into several categories and analyzes representative pieces. The critic also summarizes the changes in Sansom 's writing that resulted in a move from the "brief epigrammatic" style of his early career to the later tales that reflect "the angst of contemporary life and his own mature view of the human condition. "

Compared with his novels, which are uneven in form, [Sansom's] short stories are uniformly successful. He has himself expressed greater enjoyment in writing short stories than novels. They seem to be more suitable to his watchful eye and do not demand the depth of exploration of human psyche. Stories also capture these words of his: "A writer lives best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any...