SHORT STORIES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31327, 25 March 1967, Page 4

SHORT STORIES

My Escape from the C.I.A. By Hughes Rudd. Gollancz. 253 pp. This is a series of thirteen short stories, some appearing here for the first time and some have been published by the “Paris Review,” “Esquire,” “Harper’s Magazine,” and the “Saturday Evening Post.” Mr Rudd has an enviable mastery of the art of short-story writing and this is one of the most enjoyable and technically competent collections to have appeared for some time.. The author draws his characters with fine and sure line whether they be small school-children tormented by an incompetent and acidtempered schoolmarm, a pilot injured in a crash during the war in Italy, people caught up in a temper-fraying heat-wave, a man and his family making pies for sale during the depression years, four people at an unusual and hilariously offbeat picnic, people unaware of the strain of their lives and others too anxious about strain that may never come, all are here depicted with sympathy and sentient understanding. The background to some of these stories is the Middle West of the United States and it would appear that Mr Rudd’s early life could well have been spent there. He is now the Columbia Broadcasting Service correspondent in Moscow and was the winner of the 1960 “Paris Review” novella prize. This writing has fast movement and unerring control, and the manner of the telling as well as the stories themselves will be thoroughly rewarding to discriminating readers.