The destructors 4
Alas, poor maling 3
Proof positive 5
The end of the party 5

"Men with complicated minds cam be deceived by simplicity." ---Graham Greene

there's something different about these stories... they kind of sneak up on you and hit you in an unexpected place. my favorite...not by much...is 'the hint of an explanation' this collection is close to 5 stars

It is said that writing short stories is much more difficult than writing novels. I think this saying proves correct in the case of Greene. Do not get me wrong, Greene's short stories are good. It is just that they are not as good as his novels. I can only recommend this collection to big fans of Greene.

Pretty Great Anthology; a must read if you like Graham Greene or brilliant short fiction
It is almost impossible to award five stars to a short story anthology, especially one as comprehensive as Graham Greene's Complete Short Stories. This is, after all, a complete anthology of his previous short-story anthologies from the length and breadth of his entire 67-year writing career. Most short fiction anthologies fail because, if they showcase numerous writers, there are bound to be a few stinkers in the mix. And if it's a comprehensive collection of a single author who wrote in a variety of genres, there will be some that won't appeal. But Graham Greene is such a masterful writer, the greatest of his generation in my opinion, that even if one doesn't like a story, the plot, the genre, or the characters, you cannot help but marvel at the prose, the plot construction, the use of irony, the observations of life, and the brilliant dialogue.
Graham Greene mastered the art of the short story. His novels are not always this good. And some of the genre's in this collection are not even to my liking (I despise childhood stories and romantic comedies). Yet Graham Greene is such an obvious genius at capturing the subtle nuances of human character and personality that even the stories I hated I read with an unsettled awe. There are, in some of these stories, hints or foreshadows of plots or ideas that would come to fuller fruition in his more popular novels. So some of these stories may pale in comparison to the more complete vision in the novels. But you would only know that if you have read a lot of his work.
Greene was often called a Catholic writer, a title he wore uneasily. He described himself as a Catholic agnostic. And the span of this work, covering his entire lifetime, reflects the ebb and flow of his religious thinking over the years. Many of his early and later periods of fiction do possess strong religious themes or elements. In the middle period of his life, when his marriage floundered (he converted to Catholicism to marry his first wife), he became a stereotype of the post-war secular liberal Englishman who took neither his religion nor his marriage vows seriously and dreamed of affairs with much younger women to give his life more color. Which explains much of the inspiration behind the 1967 adult-themed comedy anthology entitled "May We Borrow Your Husband" that makes up the middle section of this collection. While this material may have been edgy and hip in the 50s and 60s it comes across as dated and anachronistic to post-modern ears.
Many of Graham's stories involve espionage and the adventures of British ex-pats abroad. He spent the war years as an MI5 operative in Sierra Leone (where he worked, ironically, for the notorious traitor, Kim Philby) and the pre-war years as an investigative journalist on behalf of Catholic interests in Mexico during its secular revolution. He wrote two classic travel books about these places and both locales pop up, as would be expected, in this anthology.
Greene always exhibits a lot of resentment for Americans in his novels. So it should come as no surprise that his English parochialism is writ large in these pages whenever an American appears in a story. But that won't surprise regular readers of his work. It was part and parcel of his cantankerous, English liberal chauvinism and it made him popular with cosmopolitan intellectuals who shared his political and social views.
The last story in this collection, "The Other Side of the Border," is an unfinished manuscript for a novel about West Africa Greene started before the war. He writes a brief introduction about it in which he explains why it was never completed. This is the kind of stuff I cherish--to see the inner workings of a great creative mind. But truthfully, it's a pretty terrible effort (as he admits) although mostly because I see it as entirely evocative of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" but with an ensemble cast of British tramps in search of a non-existent West African gold mine. What I did like about it was the way it depicted pre-war British Colonialism, when desperate, depression-era Englishmen signed up to go to desperate places on the declining imperial map in search of the nineteenth century romantic adventures that had once been a part of their cultural heritage.
No one captured the hopes and dreams of the English people amidst the declining global fortunes of mid-20th Century Great Britain as well as Graham Greene... at least until John Le Carre came along.
This is a phenomenal collection that no lover of Graham Greene's work can choose to ignore.
If you love brilliant short-fiction, this anthology is Highly Recommended.

Part of my GG binge this summer, his short stories are marvelous.

The edition I had was not paperback, but contained all the included stories. In the foreword, Greene states that he can never achieve the level of story of "The Lady with the Dog" by Chekhov, and describes himself as a novelist who writes short stories instead of the other way around (like Chekhov).

While not every one of the stories was as good as the first (in my collection) titled "May We Borrow Your Husband?", Greene masterfully, and honestly, connects with several top tier stories. "The Destructors" is marvelous, while "I Spy" which Greene considers his finest story in the collection, is heartbreaking. "Under the Garden" is also amazing.

Reading his collection straight-up is like reading two Greenes. One is silly, jovial, and slap-stick, while the other is collegiate, serious, and vicious. Both Greenes are honest about the subject matter, although the first Greene (the one that writes 'entertainments') is less serious in his honesty and more flippant, perhaps, in a forgivable way.

I recommend his complete collection to everyone who is in the mood for comedy, tragedy, and everything in-between. The story about the Canadian Santa Claus being decapitated (I shit you not) is laugh-out-loud funny.

There is some really good stuff here. It makes me wonder why I haven't seen GG more prominently featured in various best short story anthologies. Yes, there is some tedious stuff too, but that is a given in any complete collection.

I’ve been big Graham Greene fan for some time now, and I was inspired to read his Complete Short Stories since one of them figures in thematically in the film Donnie Darko; “The Destructors” from 21 Stories. The other two collections included are A Sense of Reality and May We Borrow Your Husband (And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life). I think the “The Destructors”, a story of heartless vandalization for the sake of it, was one of the standouts in the first collection. But I also enjoyed “The Blue Film”, a story of a youthful indiscretion that turns up to bring a sense of longing for something lost long ago by the protagonist. “A Chance For Mr. Lever” was also an interesting story of desperation and disaster in the wilds of Africa. It was obviously inspired by Greene’s own travels in Liberia, recounted in this excellent book, Journey Without Maps. I do have to say that I didn’t really care for the parable-like stories in A Sense of Reality, but found the stories in may We Borrow Your Husband among the best in the collection. I especially found the title story of a doomed marriage that unfolds in front of a worldly writer well executed. “Cheap In August”, about an unlikely affair, was also a standout. I didn’t find it as compelling as most of his novels or travel writing, but it was definitely a worthwhile read for the most part.

Graham Greene's stories cover a wide gamut from the strange and somewhat macabre, to uplifting simple tales. This book covers a wide breadth of his work, and gives a great sampling of his art. It also chronicles nicely his tensions with faith and meaning in life, and it is interesting to note how the development of his stories parallels his own journey.

Before Barnes & Noble goes out of business, grab a small coffee, take this off the shelf and read "A Day Wasted." That's all you need.

I’ve always enjoy reading Grahame Greene’s novels. His short stories are equally as good. These many unique stories, often setting it in different locales, maintain the same cynical wit that characterize the author’s style. My only complaint is that I’d prefer each entry prefaced with a date to add context.

A collection that has a wide variety of topics that I wasn't aware he dealt with.