THE GOLDEN ORIOLE

Five short longer short stories, while expectedly accomplished, do not this writer at his best. None have the particular, pastoral charm of his Northamptonshire writing, and the stories themselves occasion no more than temporary interest. In The King of young man in the past and a dream leads to the knowledge that his mother had killed his father ""with an overdose of shame"": THE Quiet Girl, a drab dress-maker, becomes the passionate mistress of one, two and three men simultaneously; in the little story, the most suggestive and effective, a child wife reaches a point of unavoidable exposure through another man; there's comedy in The World Is Too Much With Us in which a man abandons the companionship of a chicken for the care and comfort of a florid woman, and broader comedy in a Ride.... Bates, In the last few years, has been writing for diminishing audience- and this will not reverse the trend.