The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen

This book, filled with short stories about women of different types and men who believe the women to understand but can not at all this, was a great reading.
The very different types of women, sometimes girlish, sometimes matrons, sometimes uncertain personalities and then strong character, are described in great detail with all their wishes, their thinking and their anger. The inadequacy of the men, who often made me smile, are presented in detail with every stereotype.
Bowens writing style is fascinating. She writes in such a detailed manner that her stories are perceived as a film. Of course, her figures mostly come from the better society, but this also has to do with the time in which they were written.

[From Great Modern Reading, ed. W. Somerset Maugham, Doubleday, 1943, p. 43:]

As a relief to these two stories that deal with nice little boys [Steinbeck’s “The Gift” and T. O. Beachcroft’s “The Erne from the Coast”], I have given “Maria”, by Elizabeth Bowen, which deals with a demon of a girl. Elizabeth Bowen has written a number of stories that are much admired by those who admire them for their delicacy, atmosphere, and subtlety. She has written that is more amusing than “Maria.” Since she is probably the most distinguished novelist of her sex now writing in England, I may mention the name of her best novel, Death of the Heart. It is very good; I think it would have been even better if she had not allowed her show more vigorous Irish talent to be vitiated by the untoward authority of Henry James. show less