Complete Short Stories

marvelous reading, a real trasure for all ages. rather than sit in front of the t.v, choose one of the stories to read aloud to the family.

Graham Greene just doesn't get the recognition he deserves as a short story writer. As a novelist, his reputation has been well-established, fortunately. This collection, which incorporates "Twenty-One Stories", "A Sense of Reality", and "May We Borrow Your Husband" is a fine sampler of Greene's abilities in the shorter genre. Many of the elements that feature so prominently in his novels also figure in these stories: the spontaneity of violence; ruthless polictics; looming secrets; greed; and the complex situations that life drops on you.Here are some brief looks at my favorite stories:"The Destructors" is Greene's examination of horrific, calculated vandalism in the extreme, made even more horrifying by the coolness with which it is carried out.An event in a man's past comes back to haunt him in "The Blue Film". Strangely, the haunting specter doesn't frighten him so much as saddens him."The End of the Party" is a harrowing tale of identical twins playing hide and seek at a party. The ending paragraph left goosebumps on my skin for days. Other stories, such as "A Shocking Accident" and "May We Borrow Your Husband" are superb examples of this great story teller's talents.For those who have never read Graham Greene, "Collected Short Stories" ought to be your starting point.

Graham Greene is one of those authors like Hemingway who may "go out of style" --this will be a great pity--there transparant but subtle modernism of the first half of the first half of the century Greene and Waugh will go out of style. Already they are being replaced by a Rushdie sense of the text as an elaborate joke or rather elaborate shape.These are wonderful stories and like Poe's should be preserved and cherished.

Although I can't recall all the details regarding this book I keep a strong sensation of pleasure when I think of it. Stories are transparent, deep and at times funny. My favorite one is "May we borrow your husband?". Here the author skillfully describes a grotesque situation in wich an homosexual couple attemps by all means to have an encounter with the flamboyant husband of a just married couple. He starts telling the story as a distant witness and as time goes by he gets unwillingly involved in the whole mise en scene. Greene has a mastery to blend irony with deep feelings and awkward situations. The result is wonderful!

The plots of these stories are real enough to keep them believable, but they are not quite a product of normal life, which makes them interesting. These stories along with most of his other works put the reader in a place that has been called Greeneland. Like Greenland it is a real place on earth but it is different from any other and few people have experienced it. These stories come from the mind of a man who traveled the world and accurately observed its inhabitants in the mid part of this century. Greene also experienced much of what he saw and his stories are not written from a disinterested point of view. His style is very often brilliant (The Blue Movie),his topics are current, and his themes are universal.