While I read the vast bulk of these stories in their component volumes (21 STORIES, UNDER THE GARDEN, MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? and THE LAST WORD) I did sneak a look at this gigantic compilation so as to read a story which hadn't made any previous collection. Actually, three other stories which this volume claims were never previously collected DO appear, snuck into COLLECTED STORIES which Graham Greene himself compiled in 1972. (And I do mean "snuck" in; the three extra stories suddenly became part of UNDER THE GARDEN in its COLLECTED STORIES incarnation. If you get a stand-alone copy of UNDER THE GARDEN, though, you'll find those stories aren't in it. So, to be clear, three of the four stories which COMPLETE SHORT STORIES says appear in book-form for the first time in COMPLETE SHORT STORIES actually first appeared in book-form in the UNDER THE GARDEN section of COLLECTED STORIES.)
Having now read ALL Green's stories I can say he achieves mastery with his 1967 book of stories, MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? Just as Joyce's DUBLINERS has a theme, MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? is made up of themed stories. Greene wrote that he devised those stories just for that book. This may be a key to its success. His other three collections are, indeed, collections. MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? is made up of stories written one after the other for the book. My feeling is that, as good as any one story in his other collections is, none of them reaches the height of the story "May We Borrow Your Husband?" I am of the opinion that MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? is the best book he ever wrote. I've read all of his novels. And, as I've said, I've now read all the stories. If he'd never published the book MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? I'm not certain I would rate any of the other story collections as on a par with the novels THE POWER AND THE GLORY, THE HONORARY CONSUL or THE COMEDIANS.
But Greene sets the bar very high. He is generally brief and to the point, but in his longer stories he is still aware of the merit of the one-two-punch. He continually startles the reader. COMPLETE SHORT STORIES has the merit of preserving the four collections Greene saw in his lifetime. Penguin Books has wisely not chosen to re-arrange the story order of any one of the four original volumes. The four previously uncollected stories are placed at the end (although, as I've said, three of them WERE previously collected.)
If you are going to read only a few, the best stories are: "Cheap In August," "The Basement Room," "The End Of The Party," "The Destructors," "The Lottery Ticket" "May We Borrow Your Husband?" and one, the title of which I cannot conjure, about a Swiss doctor and a leper.

If you'd like to know what I thought of this book, please contact me directly and I'd be happy to discuss it with you.

All the best,

- TB

Loved the first story, "The Destructors", and had read it before. The rest of the book was hit and miss for me, and not on a par with his novels, which I'm usually a fan of. Lately I don't have patience with short stories unless they're really well done and hopefully have some point to them, or some sort of real ending.

Quirky...highly recommended on NPR. So I am giving it a whirl...keep you posted:)

UNDER THE GARDEN!!!

I haven't read the others yet, but I got ahold of a tiny paperback copy of "Under the Garden" on it's own, and it quickly became one of my favorite short stories of all time. It has an element of sweetness that I don't find so much in his full-length novels, even while it has those darker tinges common in his writing.

Over the years spanning his career as a novelist, Graham Greene published four volumes of short stories, collected here along with a few additional stories at the end. The read - by turns - is an exhilarating and somewhat ponderous experience. ~ which is to say, collections one and three are consistently top-notch; two and four are, frankly, a bit of an effort to get through. The coda stories are also of less consequence (though one of them, 'Dear Dr. Falkenheim', is singularly creepy).

I had only read one of Greene's novels, 'The Quiet American'. It hadn't occurred to me to read others - mainly because some of Greene's work had been made into fine films directed by Carol Reed ('The Fallen Idol', 'The Third Man', and 'Our Man in Havana') which I still watch on occasion. Greene had served as screenwriter for those films - thus sparing his work the savagery that fiction usually faces en route to screen adaptations - so I made the assumption that the source material was rather intact.

But I still wanted to read more of what he'd written, so 'Complete Short Stories' seemed the thing to do.

As I was reading the first collection ('Twenty-One Stories'), one aspect made me think of the other short story volume I'd recently read, Elizabeth Taylor's 'You'll Enjoy It When You Get There'. Like Taylor, Greene was exhibiting a marvelous range in subject matter. The bulk of the stories opened up new (often intricate) worlds, spiced with cleverness and wit - and sometimes laced with dark longing or heartfelt poignancy; generally populated with socially awkward people. I was gripped.

But that feeling of being captured almost completely vanished through the second collection, 'A Sense of Reality' (and then again with the concluding bundle, 'The Last Word and Other Stories'). What seemed to be happening (to me, anyway) was I felt Greene was concentrating more on *writing* than on story. He could still certainly write - but, overall (with occasional exception), what he was writing about wasn't all that compelling.

~ which was what made the third set, 'May We Borrow Your Husband?', a refreshing return-to-form - esp. with Greene's singular power of observation joined with his uncanny ability to surprise.

It was an odd thing - noticing this conflicting juxtaposition of tone and intent throughout the volume. Still... when Greene is in top form, he's in-flight - and it's thrilling to be on-board.

Favorite stories:
(from 'Twenty-One Stories':) 'The Blue Film', 'When Greek Meets Greek', 'The Case for the Defence', 'Across the Bridge', 'A Drive in the Country', 'The Basement Room' (the basis for 'The Fallen Idol'), 'Proof Positive', 'The End of the Party'.
(from 'May We Borrow Your Husband?':) Collection title story; 'Chagrin in Three Parts', 'Mortmain', 'Cheap in August', 'The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen', 'Doctor Crombie', 'Two Gentle People'.

I want to also Find and Read SOON!!! =)

There are a number of authors that, despite having a couple of novels under their belt, are primarily known as short story writers simply because they were either more prolific or produced better work when restricted to the shorter format. As almost any prose writer will tell you, its a skill that requires two entirely different sets of muscles.

However, for the most part it seems that the only major muscles Graham Greene possessed were novel writing ones. They made him look pretty buff, granted, but I guess its like focusing your entire sports career on conditioning the running muscles and not the throwing ones. You'll still be able to throw stuff, but when you do try its going to make people wonder if its just easier to buy you a slingshot and save you some misery.

But honestly I don't believe Greene is even known as a short story writer and not simply because his peaks as a novelist overshadow everything else. I bought this because I am apparently easily seduced by packages that market themselves as "complete", to the point where I'd probably eagerly purchase a "Complete Set of Vengeful Assassins" and that'll be that for me.

This one collects basically all the stories that Greene wrote over the course of his career in one near six hundred page volume and one thing that will become clear is that six hundred pages of Greene's short fiction is perhaps more than you'll possibly need. All the elements that make his novels so interesting for me, namely the crushing sense of inevitability, the exotic settings seen through a reporter's eye, the examination of the religious and social themes, seem to work better when played out over the course of several hundred pages instead of ten. Reduced to a shorter format, most of the stories, especially the early ones, appear to act more like sketches or scenes searching for a novel. Most of them set up a scenario and let it play through briefly before ending on some kind of chilling twist. This does make them effective in surts but its like having nothing but chewy snacks instead of a full meal.

What's interesting is how early on he seemed to be trying out different genres, with a couple stories either hinting at spiritual or otherworldly elements or simply doing their best to be outright creepy. Even more intriguing is a couple stories that fell into the "A Sense of Reality" collection (namely "A Discovery in the Woods" and "Under the Garden") that swerve very close to a peculiar version of fantasy that you almost wish he could have developed further, if only for the novelty of seeing what else he could do with it.

But for the most part you get fairly standard Greene concerns (not religion, oddly enough, even if Catholicism is referenced a few times it seems he saved the heavy explorations for the novels themselves) so you have spouses cheating on each other (often the best ones, like "May We Borrow Your Husband", where a man falls in a love with a lady whose husband is being seduced by two other men, "Cheap in August", which has the lived in and grimy room feel of his good stuff, and "Two Gentle People", which manages to avoid being manipulative by a very small margin and thus works), stories set briefly in other territories (but without that heavy sense of place the novels manage), a smattering of tales involving spies or dictators or revolutionaries, but all of them functioning as a kind of Greene-lite, showing you what he can do without really delving into the meat of it.

Are any of them bad? Actually, no. Greene is still Greene is still Greene so his prose remains clear-eyed and even when the plot isn't exactly crackling with drama he's pretty good at telling a story. Sometimes he's too clever for his own good and clarity becomes somewhat of an issue, but when he's good in small doses you almost wish he had worked as hard as he did on the novels. But when you have novels as good as "The Heart of the Matter", "Brighton Rock", and "The Power and the Glory" it seems selfish to demand that he write iconic short stories as well. Completists will certainly want to take a long, especially for the roads not traveled but everyone else will probably be happy with the longer works.

Oh my goodness...so many fabulous stories by a master storyteller! Whether you just love to read stories (especially short ones!) or you are a story writer yourself, this is an excellent example of superb storytelling.

Some of these stories are remarkably funny. I'm enjoying seeing the glimmers of the novels in them as well.

Disappointing.

4.5