And every time I teach certain stories - I mean, for example, James Joyce's The Dead, which I talk about in the book as the perfect story to go to if, for example, you want to writea party scene, which party scenes are very difficult to write.
She has the indispensable knack of being able to writea well-turned scene, and "The Great God Pan" is full of scenes that are so subtly drawn that you can almost overlook their failure to add up to a fully convincing whole.
This painful but moving scene provides a clue as to why Mr Browner felt compelled to write this book and why the art of hospitality has come to matter so much to him.