BOYS OF GOLD

This slight, though affecting collection of seven partially linked short stories appears to be the fragmentary fictional autobiography of its Welsh author (also a noted painter and sculptor), whose wartime service in Burma and experiences as a coal miner are transcribed in such terse vignettes as “The End of Summer” (which describes a boy’s first day in the mines) and the vivid title story, in which a young soldier’s plaintive recall of boyhood adventures immediately precedes his death on the battlefield. Nothing here that surprises—but the author’s painter’s eye and flair for homely dialogue makes it all intensely real.