H.E. Bates Companion

240 pp. London: Michael Joseph, 1960; Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Co. (An Atlantic Press Book), 1960, with title The Grapes of Paradise. An uneven quartet of novellas that continues the theme of unhappy love explored in The Nature of Love (1953) and Death of a Huntsman (1957). Baldwin (203) summarizes reviewers and finding the tales "readable but flat, the characters lacking conviction and pungency." Contains: An Aspidistra in Babylon, A Month by the Lake, A Prospect of Orchards, The Grapes of Paradise.