OCEAN OF STORY: The Uncollected Stories of Christina Stead

I write because I can,"" declared Christina Stead; and a similar calm, deceptively simple understatement colors these previously uncollected stories and essays written between the 1930's and the author's death in 1983. She was born in Australia but became a world-traveler and lived much of her life in Britain, the US (several stories here are set in wartime and postwar Manhattan), and Western Europe. Stead's characters--whether American, Belgian, Australian or British--are coolly and meticulously drawn. And her vision made no compromises or deals; this retrospective of sometimes almost clinically objective character sketches shows everywhere the hand--and the reticence--of a master artist.