A Bit Off the Map

[2] The stories in A Bit Off the Map include "A Flat Country Christmas", "Once A Lady", and "More Friend Than Lodger".

The stories intersperse the ironic, as a way of deflating the premises of the facades the characters have erected.

[3] Marina MacKay, of Washington University in St. Louis, says the characters in the collection, "are struggling to find their place on England's post-war map."

She calls him "a mentally subnormal Teddy boy who drifts around cafes, infatuated with an untalented, artistic crowd.

Reviewing the collection in the year of its release, Time magazine called it "brilliantly readable", and noted that "there is no denying the sneering precision of his observations.