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In the short stories which make up THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS Arnold Bennett caught some of the manner of Maupassant, one of the French writers on whom he modelled his writing. The redolent tale of the coffin and the cheese, 'In a New Bottle', and 'The Silent Brothers' (who have not addressed one another for ten years) possess the true ring. The pride, pretensions and provincial snobbery of the Potteries are handled by Arnold Bennet with amused tolerance. Most of his stories, like the four linked adventures of Vera Cheswardine, set the home life of middle-class manufactures of earthenware and porcelain against a 'singular scenery of coal dust, potsherds, flame and steam'. But Bennett never ignores the less successful members of families in a region where 'clogs to clogs is only three generations'.