SOURCE: "Characters without Will," in The New York Times Book Review, March 25, 1956, pp. 4, 24.

In this review of A Contest of Ladies, Morris argues that the story writer's usual concerns with plot development don't interest Sansom because his works are "entertainments" and "extravaganzas" that "come off best when quick and to the point. "

In the fifteen stories that make up A Contest of Ladies, William Sansom again exhibits a gift for dazzling verbal prestidigitation. For surely, as has been remarked in the past, Mr. Sansom's sly and energetic legerdemain marshals the English language into magical bursts of freshness and improvisation. In these new stories, as in those of his earlier collections, whatever mood Mr. Sansom is after he stunningly evokes: the macabre, the malevolent, the boisterous, the farcical. His sense of place—Strasbourg, Marseilles, the Costa Brava, an English countryside—is impressively conveyed; and his mists, thunderstorms and blazing...