This collection of stories -two by Sassoon (American) and one apiece by Alan Burns (British) and SimonVestdijk
(Dutch) is a commendable effort to acquaint American readers with relatively
unfamiliar authors. The common ground for the three is a serious attempt to
write well- The themes range from Sassoon’s sensuous and rather murky
triangle (“Green”) in experimental prose to Burns’ tragicomic and sometimes
bitter portrait of a young man growing up in England during World War II.
But it is Vestdijk’s “My Brown Friend” which deserves the most careful
study. This is the first story ever published in English by the noted Dutch
novelist and it is brilliant: a quietly intense description of the distant
passions of one schoolboy for another Library Journal