WELCOME TO THE CITY

Some of these stories have been published in The New Yorker. They are not everybody's dish, but for those to whom Shaw's sensitivity to currents of human conflict marks distinction, this is a thoroughly worthwhile collection. Stories of human misunderstandings, of loneliness, unhappiness, of inner worlds at conflict with outer, of sympathy devoid of Saroyan-maudlinity. In quiet contrasts, in a warm love of people, Shaw sketches relationships of all types in revealing fashion, -- from writers striving to escape the desperation of the war to an Italian winning justice in his own way, from a woman baiting her husband to Jew baiting that doesn't come off -- a wide range of mood and incident, seventeen in all, with the title story the least effective.