[In "Boy with a Trumpet" Rhys Davies] mines his boyhood and background thoroughly with skill and success. It is obvious that many of the tales represent a fictional treatment of actual incidents; there is the terror of small-town reality in them…. Plot, as the professional storyteller knows it, does not exist for Mr. Davies; he exposes raw material, examines it and leaves it; he does not even offer a use, morally or sentimentally, for what he exhibits. His writing, therefore, is almost reportorial, except that by cunning selection and delicate emphasis it enters the field of art.

There is a single point of view in all of Mr. Davies's stories; he is objectively compassionate, concerned with the tragedy of every human life, but without indignation or regret for the inevitable action which reduces human aspirations to ashes. In the title story a boy raised in an orphanage longs...