SOURCE: Kilroy, James F. “Setting the Standards: Writers of the 1920s and 1930s.” In The Irish Short Story, edited by James F. Kilroy, pp. 95-144. Boston, Mass.: Twayne Publishers, 1984.

In the following excerpt, Kilroy offers an overview of O'Faoláin's short stories.

If intelligence may be defined as the capacity to recognize equal validity in contradictory statements and the ability to recognize complexities and dilemmas, Sean O'Faolain is the most intelligent of Irish writers. Puzzles, human contradictions, and unresolved problems dominate his collections of stories over a career of more than fifty years, and the development of his literary craft may even be traced by considering the various ways in which he deals with the complexities of human experiences.

The son of a pious mother and a father who thought of himself as British, John Whelan very early learned to recognize and deal with what he regarded as...