SOURCE: "Death Dance: 25 Stories Designed to be Dipped Into," in Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1969, p. 8.

In this mixed review of Death Dance: Twenty-Five Stories, Kirsch criticizes Wilson's detachment in his stories and his overemphasis on English class relations, traits that often result in one-dimensional characters.

Death Dance: Twenty-five Stories by Angus Wilson should not be read straight through but rather dipped into. I suspect that the first procedure produces a response similar to the presence of a weekend guest: he is interesting at times but an intense exposure produces moments of ennui.

The fact is that too much of Wilson, with his coolness and detachment, his concern with the nuance of class, caste and condition, results in an impatience.

In fairness, however, it must be said that just when you want to put the book down, you run into a story such as "More Friend Than Lodger," a...