cover image This Freedom

This Freedom

John Morrison. Penguin Books, $5.95 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-14-008633-1

The 16 stories in this collection are set in and around Melbourne, Australia, where the author has lived since 1928. Several of the stories focus on the lives of ""Warfies'' (dockworkers), and all address the struggles of the working class, whether their members are city dwellers or country folk. In the title story, the loss of a workingman's wife and the swift destruction of his home in a fire, result in a certain freedom, an openness and appreciation of life. This theme unifies the collection but is wearisome to the readereach story resolves itself in a similarly simplistic moral. For example, in ``The Bursting of Rory O'Mahony,'' a hardworking family man comes to realize that he is not a city man nor a man who wanted the safety and security of a family and career. As the story closes, he has ``called it a day and gone off on the wind that tramps the world.'' Many of these stories are so brief as to be over, in some cases, before they have really begun. (May)