The majority of [the stories in The Best of Rhys Davies] are told with a wrily humorous appreciation of the lapses into disorder to which even the most disciplined lives are sometimes subject. People fall far, they fall unexpectedly and they fall funnily; but they rarely do themselves or others lasting injury. But there are two masterly pieces in which the tone is graver and the outcome less jokey. In 'The Chosen One' one of those sullen uncomfortably passionate young men who so often appear in Davies's work is so far baited by the imperious eccentric who owns his rented cottage, that he is eventually driven to murder her. In the other, 'I Will Keep Her Company', an old man marooned in his isolated home by a blizzard, maintains a lonely vigil by the corpse of his wife, while a busy-body district-nurse attempts to organise his rescue.

The one English story, 'A Visit to Eggeswick Castle', is also a gem….

The one failure is 'Nightgown'. It is possible to believe in the down-trodden miner's wife, whose whole existence is spent in preparing baths and vast meals for her rampant menfolk—a husband and five sons; but there is a sentimentality, rare in Davies's work, in the account of how this pathetic woman slowly saves up in secret to buy herself a white silk nightgown, which is eventually to become not only the one beautiful thing that she has ever possessed but also her shroud.

Perhaps because the American public cherishes the genre more than we do, Rhys Davies's short-stories have tended to receive more acclaim over there than here. But their vitality, zest for life and delight in human absurdity and folly should eventually bring them a far wider readership in this country.