Twenty Stories

There are no cliffhangers or comediesand no literary cataclysmsin this British import garnered from submissions to England's Southeast Regional Arts Association. Novelist/critic King has brought together stories by new writers with those of Gabriel Josipovici, Fred Urquhart, Thomas Hinde, and others known to British readers. In ``Angelfish,'' novelist Wendy Perriam portrays the rage of an obsessive model boarder when his priggish landlady's head is turned by a new, ``artistic'' lodger, one who blithely ignores her fastidious ways; Eugenie Hill contributes ``Poor Edith,'' wherein a model child commits her first act of disobedience, running away in panic at a crippled woman's approach; in ``Mrs. Llewellyn,'' newcomer Rosemary Sayers describes a woman's endeavor to die as she has livedwith unfailing seemliness. Etiquette and its violation is a curiously frequent theme in these well-mannered stories. Devoid of psychological, structural, or linguistic ingenuity, this is a workmanlike but unexciting collection. October