Books: Surprise Around the Corner

THE WRONG SET (239 pp.)—Angus Wilson—Morrow ($3).

These 13 remarkably unpleasant stories represent the first two years of work by a rising new British author. Angus Wilson is a 36-year-old Oxford man now working in the British Museum Library in London. He has large, sad, slightly protuberant eyes, the mournful, darkling air of most younger British writers, and a considerable reputation in some unexpected quarters. Sean O'Faolain has hailed him as a writer of the first rank; Vogue says his "mind has the sudden round-the-corner surprise of Saki."

Unlike Saki (H. H. Munro), however, Author Wilson builds the surprise around the corner almost...