One of the ways the world can be divided up is into those people for whom life only began when they grew up, and those for whom childhood remains the inescapably real world. Elizabeth Bowen belonged to the latter group; as Angus Wilson says in his introduction [to The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen,] she had 'one of the principal features of the great romantics—a total connection with her own childhood'. A concentrated reading of these 79 stories, written over half a century, confirms this view. Most of the strongest are about children, isolated and uncertain about who they belong to; staying in houses where they would rather not be, making attachments that do not hold, looking for an Eden of happiness that eludes them.

Even in her adult characters, the frightened child still cries. There is always the possibility that the loved one will disappear, does not...