Twelve excellent stories set in wartime Britain. They were also written then, and you feel that these are almost documents of the psychology of people under siege. The war is the felt background, but the focus is on the attempt to maintain some sort of life. Bowen is a wonderful writer, able to convey subtle feelings in a word or gesture. Most powerful in these stories is the sense of a lost world, an age that is gone forever, a time when life was normal, when people had attachments to places and things. I look forward to reading more of her work. ( )