[Below, Kupferberg notes the wider range of Farrell's fiction in A Dangerous Woman and Other Stories as the author incorporates a gallery of new European characters and locales into his work.]

For those who are statistically-minded this collection of fourteen short stories [A Dangerous Woman and Other Stories] represents the twenty-fifth book of fiction published by James T. Farrell. While it would certainly be an exaggeration to say that No. 25 is indistinguishable from No. 1, readers of the more stark and bitter of these stories will have no difficulty in recognizing the author of Studs Lonigan. As a matter of fact, they will have no difficulty recognizing Studs Lonigan himself, for here he is, in a story called "Boys and Girls," together with Weary Reilly, Red Kelly, Davey Cohen, and other of his South Side playmates including the perfect hostess, a girl named Iris. The story is a retelling of one of the incidents of Studs Lonigan, a little party at Iris' house while her mother was away.

While some of the other stories in this collection are less directly related to Mr. Farrell's earlier chronicles, they share the same grim and graphic qualities. In "Memento Mori" a truck driver leads a drab dismal life whose monotony is relieved only by the manner of his death—not from failing health as the-reader is led to expect, but from an automobile accident. In "Senior Prom," one of the more touching stories, our old friend Danny O'Neill undergoes his first experience with youthful love and jealousy by taking a beautiful girl to a school dance only to see her fall for a classmate: Here, as in "A Saturday Night in America," a story of Polish refugee girls recalling the horrors of prison camps, Mr. Farrell's sense of compassion adds depth to his portraiture. In depicting these sorry human specimens he is clinical without being cynical.

The stories in A Dangerous Woman are almost equally divided between familiar Farrell characters leading aimless and sometimes desperate lives in Chicago and New York and the new gallery he has lately been creating of Americans abroad. Mr. Farrell has traveled to Europe a good deal in recent years, and whether he meets a London charwoman ("I'm Dancing Frances") or a Swedish feminist ("A Dangerous Woman") a story or a character sketch is likely to be the result.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of these European stories is the way they demonstrate Mr. Farrell's widening descriptive scope. Studs Lonigan, of course, used to admire the sun glinting on the lagoon in Washington Park, but he quickly proceeded to other, less tranquil occupations. In "It's Cold in the Alps," the longest and most unusual story in the book, Mr. Farrell writes of American newlyweds motoring from France into Switzerland, seeing and sensing the beauty of their surroundings: ". . . the green of the trees at twilight, and then the curves, the surprises, with your seeing one view that couldn't be more magnificent, and then coming on another that was, and you just felt awe—that's all, awe."

The American couple in this story, incidentally, is a good deal more awesome than the scenery, for they quarrel from start to finish over everything from the pronunciation of "Louvre" to whether to sleep in a hotel or the back of the car. It's a marriage that breaks up very quickly, leaving nothing behind it but memories of the Alps. But the story introduces elements of humor and charm that demonstrate that Mr. Farrell can write entertainingly and perceptively about other things than the old days in Chicago.