This is three collections of short stories combined. The third collection, May We Borrow Your Husband, is in another class compared to the first two. Unless you're an aficionado of Graham Greene, they aren't essential.

May We Borrow Your Husband? and the other stories in the third section of this collection were brilliant!

My favourites:
May We Borrow Your Husband?
A Day Saved
Cheap in August
The Hint of an Explanation
Under the Garden

All ratings:

TWENTY-ONE STORIES
The Destructors ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Special Duties ⭐️
The Blue Film ⭐️⭐️
The Hint of an Explanation ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When Greek Meets Greek ⭐️⭐️
Men at Work ⭐️
Alas, Poor Maling ⭐️⭐️
The Case for the Defence ⭐️
A Little Place off the Edgware Road ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Across the Bridge ⭐️⭐️
A Drive in the Country ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Innocent ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Basement Room ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Chance for Mr Lever ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Brother ⭐️⭐️
Jubilee ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Day Saved ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
ISpy ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Proof Positive ⭐️⭐️
The Second Death ⭐️⭐️
The End of the Party ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A SENSE OF REALITY
Under the Garden ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Visit to Morin ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dream of a Strange Land ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Discovery in the Woods ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND?
May We Borrow Your Husband? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Beauty ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Chagrin in Three Parts ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Over-night Bag ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mortmain ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cheap in August ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Shocking Accident ⭐️⭐️
The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen ⭐️⭐️
Awful When You Think of It ⭐️⭐️
Doctor Crombie ⭐️
The Root of All Evil Two Gentle People ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom."

It is the first time I encounter Graham Greene and I must say I am quite pleased with what I have read (the amount of sentences I have noted down are proof of that). As many have said it, GG is a master of storytelling. I particularly enjoyed the irony with which he described many of his characters, though this didn't prevent him for showing sympathy as well. Perhaps next time I will attempt to indulge in one of his novels.

ok I know I read this book, not sure why it didn't show up on this site and yes it's good.

Graham Greene is one of the best short story writers - ever. He has interesting characters, tight dialogue, and ingenius insight. His stories are everyday yet remarkably interesting. Just flip through the book, pick a story and read it. You won't be disappointed.

tThis will be my first review—when I say review here, I now and forever mean my rambling reminiscence on my reading experience, hastily organized—of a short story collection, which is nice because this is probably the best collection of short stories I've ever read. (I will say that I have a published review of Ethan Rutherford's The Peripatetic Coffin in the ARCC Campus Eye, so I do have some experience in the matter, though this will be something else entirely.) I've yet to do serious research on the life of Graham Green, though from what I've uncovered surfing the web, as well as from reading his Collected Short Stories and previously The Quiet American, I've discovered a few things. First of all, the man had a plethora of knowledge about the world that he lived in, as well as being extremely well traveled. It seems he also had an eerie prescience in certain situations, which reflects on his perceptiveness of humans on an individual and cultural level. Greene was also something of an enigma, seeing how he came to Catholicism in early adult life after meeting his soon-to-be wife, whom he would later become estranged from, as well as from religious practice altogether. These traits all shine through in this collection, which features work from four decades of the twentieth century.
tI became aware of Graham Greene a long time ago—at least, what feels like a long time for someone who took their first legal drink just one week prior to this writing. It was late in the year of 2008, November or December, and Graham Greene had been dead for nearly two decades. A cute girl who sat behind me in Spanish class told me about a little-known independent film with a cult following called Donnie Darko. While I'm hesitant to start the explaining the abstract plot of the 2001 film starring Jake Gyllenhall, I will say that it is my favorite film to this day, and that I've seen it many, many times. A majority of the film takes place in a private school, where an English teacher (played by Drew Barrymore) is at odds with the school administration and a fanatically religious dance coach. The catalyst of this tension is Barrymore's sharing with the class the work of Graham Greene, particularly his short story "The Destructors."
tThis reference would lead me—years later, after I'd discovered my avid love for literature—to my searching for a collection of Greene's short stories. At Magers and Quinn in Uptown Minneapolis, I found The Quiet American, though no collection of short stories. Though I'm not usually one for war or espionage novels, which lead to my shelving Greene's novel still unread for some time, I thoroughly enjoyed it upon completion and assured myself that I would return to Greene's work at some later date. It was earlier this month when I saw The End of the Tour, the film about David Foster Wallace, that I returned to the bookstore in Uptown. (The film was a limited release, and I dragged my brother to the theater on Hennepin Avenue to see it.) The store's stock on Graham Greene's work was much more abundant this time around, and I found the collection that I'd initially searched for. And although my watching movies is a rare thing these days with my large reading agenda, film is where I found my love for storytelling, and I will always have the softest of spots in my heart for Donnie Darko. This led me, with so many other new and unread books on my bedside table, to turn immediately to Greene.
tWhat makes Greene's stories so profound is that he is able to unearth the mystifying truths of the human condition from a large overtone of realism. Collected Short Stories opens with "The Destructors," and while it was good to finally have read the story that influenced so greatly my favorite movie of all time—the framed movie poster hangs over my bed to this day—it was nothing compared to the treasure trove that awaited me in the next 300+ pages. The plots all vary in terms of extravagance, ranging from dissatisfied marriages to immortal people living secretly beneath the roots of an oak tree, but it's a rare exception when one of the stories couldn't be deemed realistic. The mystical never seems to undermine the reality of these stories, and the effect is his ability to shock readers and to fill them with a sense of sadness and foreboding. Adverse to that point, I was also at times made to feel hope, yearning, and love.
t The topics and themes vary too. Many of the stories have strong religious overtones, where the faithful can either come off as wistful and charismatic, or instead as ignorant and prideful. One may think of Greene as a man of strong faith at end of one story, and then as a hopeless cynic at the next. Regardless of how the characters may appear, and how that may reflect on the state of their faith, the characters always seem dynamic, like living and breathing people. Their problems have a depth and darkness that the average reader might not expect out of literature from this early in the twentieth century. I was surprised to find Greene elaborate so clearly and openly about things like evil, suicide, infidelity and homosexuality, to uphold and to build upon ideas that I see as progressive in today's age. He writes evocatively and convincingly of human being's pursuit of morality, and our search for purpose; of the relationships between sexes, between families, between nations; of the self-consciousness inflicted upon us by minds, or even madness. I found many times while reading this collection—as I did upon reading The Quiet American—that there were numerous passages where an idea or image affected me in a way that no other author has been able to do, excerpts that I could write down as a quote and read it over when it feels I'm in a lull and looking for enlightenment. That sounds like a banal platitude (to use a very Wallace-esque phrase), but I'm struggling to meaningfully explain the impact his sentences and paragraphs have had on me. So concise and clear, yet so deep and revelatory; the only phrase I can think of to explain these excerpts and passages that are so approachable and quotable is this: fuckin' perfect.
tThe book consists of three separate short story collections, one from the late '40s and the other two being published in the '60s, but some of the earliest stories are dated from around the time of the Great Depression. Greene traveled often in his life—even to the most exotic places—so while most of his stories take place in England, the setting is also subject to change. There are historical references throughout, names and events that might have been important to the understanding of the story that I readers may be uneducated about. The Battle of Britain, for instance, is taking place during one of the earlier stories in the collection, so reader's who aren't versed in WWII history may be confused as to why there are planes dropping bombs on the city. Despite all this—the stories being old, their being set in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar customs, with outdated technologies and ways of life—this collection has spoken to me of the human condition and some of our most searching questions in a way that I've never before encountered.
tI've heard—or rather, read—it said that Graham Greene is the greatest novelist of the 20th century. Seeing how I've only read one of his novels (and one considered not a novel, but an 'entertainment' by Greene's own standards), I can't speak on that matter. I can say that the one novel of his that I've read had sparked a great interest in me, that this collection of short stories has solidified him as one of my favorite writers, and that I'm now in the pursuit of discovering whether or not that statement rings with truth. I would recommend to anyone "A Discovery in the Woods," about a gang of children committing a forbidden act and crossing the boundaries of their crude village. Shockingly sad, beautifully written, and with a great twist at the end, it's one of the many exemplifications of Greene's mastery of the short-story form. If his novels sustain the quality found in his Collected Short Stories, I imagine I'll be one to back up those who label Greene as the greatest.

This is a collection of stories about unappealing people behaving badly. Similar characters people Graham Greene's novels, but in the novels you have more time to get used to them.
There is not much humor here, and what humor there is tends toward the morbid, as in this from "A Shocking Accident":

"I'm afraid your father was very seriously hurt indeed."
"Oh."
In fact, Jerome, he died yesterday. Quite without pain."
"Did they shoot him through the heart?"
"I beg your pardon. What did you say, Jerome?"
"Did they shoot him through the heart?"
"Nobody shot him, Jerome. A pig fell on him."

This book is a collection of previously work collected into one volume.
Some stories are stronger that others, the early ones are the best in my opinion.
They seem less self-consciously written by an author. Some are laugh out loud funny. I haven't reda Graham Greene to date but this collection encourages me to do just that.

Graham Greene does not often get applause or accolade for his gift of writing short stories.I cannot help feeling that most of his admirers tend to ignore or even write off his eclectic, consistently intelligent and thoughtful and even breathtakingly imaginative folio of short stories and novellas in the light of the already exceptional accomplishments that his novels, essays and articles represent. For me, though, already a self-confessed ardent admirer, this superbly compiled edition, comprising of three thematically different but equally well-written and lucid collections of stories, was quite a treasure trove.

One discovers all the shades of this masterful, dexterous, compulsively readable and philosophically profound storyteller and writer in many small, beautifully carved pieces that also glitter with wit and wisdom, that burn with pathos and radiate with depth and intelligence, that are, in turns, probing, cinematic, mesmerising, dramatic, hilarious, coolly cynical, heart-rending, romantic, saucy, absurd, imaginative and incisively political.

And at heart, these stories are all uniformly wise, worldly and warmly compassionate, as brilliantly written and concise and cohesive as any thing that this extraordinary, almost faultless writer has written in his entire career.

I had already read and slavishly loved more than once "May We Borrow Your Husband" - a collection of alternately tender, hilarious, absurd, melancholy, cheeky and romantic stories about love, lust, adultery, frivolity, mischief, nostalgia and death that belied its title so brilliantly and astutely. And so, this review will be primarily about my feelings - undoubtedly of love and admiration - for the other two collections in this edition.

TWENTY-ONE STORIES:

One of the intriguing things that I noticed about this collection is that a good chunk of the material is dated from Greene's earliest years as a writer, well before the 1940s and 1950s. And while that would normally mean that these stories would be indicative of a certain rawness, trust me, even the oldest stories in the collection, dating back to the late 1920s when he was just finding his first footing, are demonstrative of his flawless command for storytelling, his crystal-clear skill in orchestrating a narrative from beginning to end and in fleshing out moral conundrums and wholly believable characters caught up in these conundrums and situations. There is a flawless, almost immaculate sense of economy in the beautifully deceptive "I Spy", there is a terrifying portrait of metaphysical horror in "A Little Place Off The Edgware Road" and in "The End Of The Party", there is rich, local texture to be found in "Across The Bridge" and "A Chance For Mr. Lever", there is gilt-edged irony to be found in "Jubilee" and "The Case For The Defence" and there is a lingering sense of nostalgia and comradely compassion in "Innocent" and "Brother" - all unforgettable pieces that deserve to be read on their own by the uninitiated.

Also included in these 21 stories are a handful of stories that Greene wrote so astutely in the years of the Second World War and they are equally pitch-perfect in their combination of razor-sharp satire offset by an Ealing-style whimsicality or an unexpected core of warmth and romance. "Alas, Poor Maling" will earn your chuckles, "Men At Work" will prove to be a minutely observed critique of the Ministry of Information and its futile attempts to keep the flag flying and "Greek For Greek" is like one of those pleasantly comic and alternately romantic 1940 British comedies, by Noel Coward or by Charles Crichton, that also ends with a happy ending that leaves a big generous grin on your face.

The longer pieces in the collection, like the emotionally harrowing "The Basement Room" - the story on which the film "The Fallen Idol" was based - or the universally well-known "The Destructors" are themselves, needless to say, deserving of every word of praise that they get - brilliantly orchestrated, allegorical narratives rich not only in dazzling imagery but also with tension, a sense of cinematic atmosphere, compelling characterisation and ironical conclusions that remain etched indelibly in the mind. The rest of the collection is equally good - especially "The Blue Film" which demonstrates Greene's economy, sense of dark humour and compassion in unexpected ways.

A SENSE OF REALITY:

This collection was an unexpected gem. It is the shortest of the three collections condensed in this edition and yet, this is the one that, with no disrespect to the other two, that contains hidden the biggest, most extraordinary marvels of Greene's imagination. All the four contents are united by what the title implies - they are all, at one level, about a subjective perception of the characters in a narrative of what is real and what is not. The collection opens with the beautiful, almost heartbreaking, surreal and soul-searching novella "Under The Garden" - that I had also read last year and had loved in all its imaginative beauty and all-too-believable resonance - and ends with a post-apocalyptic fantasy that equally moves the reader to tears of both pain and release and in between gives us two stories that question, brilliantly and lucidly, the concepts of faith and belief, of doing one's duty and of being bound and trapped by keeping up a pretense of honour.

"A Visit To Morin" was a story that I could relate to - just as Greene has compelled me, indirectly, to believe, Morin, the fictional French author of the title, has also inspired the narrator of this story to come closer to belief, despite his atheistic inclinations. And yet, as the latter pays his boyhood hero a visit, what he discovers is that there is no clear meaning of the words "faith" and "belief" and Morin is not what he seems to be.

"Dream Of A Strange Land" reminded me of "England Made Me" and "Doctor Fischer" - there is that same cold-blooded streak of cynicism running through the narrative but as in those stories, there is also pathos and despair - on one hand, a possible old leper who yearns for dignity and on the other, a jaded old doctor overruled and manipulated by the rich and the mighty who is equally incapable of speaking out for his dignity. Shall the twain meet again?

Finally, we have "A Discovery In The Woods" which is a marvelously imaginative and even disquieting post-apocalyptic fantasy as well as a haunting post-modern parable of the legend of Noah's Ark. It is Greene at his most experimental and audacious and also him at his most emotionally stirring and resonant and the heart-pounding, heart-breaking denouement is one of the best conclusions in any short story that I have read in all my life.

Mortmain, The Destructors, The Hint of an Explanation and A Day Saved - enough said