The short stories of Maeve Brennan are among the finest of our time. Her first collection In and Out of Never-Never Land, appeared several years ago, but by then her reputation had already been established by her many stories published in The New Yorker. Christmas Eve opens with a groups of stories about Herbert's Retreat, a snug community on the Hudson River, not far from New York. Here Miss Brennan deals particularly with a man named Charles Runyon, whose self-satisfaction is as large as his malice. There follows a short, beautiful evocation of New York City on a snowy night. The last six stories in the collection are set in Ireland and they concern two very different families—the Bagots and the Derdons. Miss Brennan writes about the cohesive strength of ordinary things in family life, about the sad triumph of a last survivor, about the loneliness of a marriage where nothing more can be said. Maeve Brennan's stories make their remarkable achievements in a deceptively calm voice. But they do so with a flash of wit, a magically right detail, and a sudden, illuminating lift of eloquence. Christmas Eve gives the pleasure of reading an accomplished artist in fiction.