My first book by Irwin Shaw, and more than significant disappointment.
Inspiration for his short stories is taken from everyday life - somewhat I usually appreciate, however, these stories are imho pointless and very often, they go from nowhere to nowhere. This is not to say that all of them are really really bad, but too average, poor...
Interesting features:
1) in some sense, this book is constructed as critique of american society after WWII. Some stories deal with topics like burgeois way of life, young communist radicals, hollow coctail parties etc. What is problematic, Shaw is fine just with simple, a bit superficial description of it, and when he adds pathetic (almost hysterical) tone, the stories become unreadable.
2) uncompromisingly strict to fascism/nazism. In this point, it seems to me that he gets unrealistic and one-sided: in other words, the division on „good“ and „evil“ strikingly clear.
3) I regard the stories to be more melodramatic than revealing, it has no „meaning“. And while the stories are boring - as regards their content, and conservative/traditional - regarding their form, the book is, all in all, doomed to be forgotten. ( )