A Party for the Girls: Six Stories

The six long stories of A Party for the Girls present H.E. Bates at his finest. A crack shot at understated tragedy, Bates is perhaps at his best with comedy and character––consider the opening line of the title story: “Miss Tompkins, who was seventy-six, bright pink-looking in a bath-salts sort of way and full of an alert but dithering energy, looked out the drawing-room window for the twentieth time since breakfast and found herself growing increasingly excited.” Though virtually unknown ...