A master of the sinister, Greene's stories have wonderful twists and shocking turns. A simple encounter on a train is unsettling; another in a movie theatre is macabre. The writing seems deceptively straight-forward, which makes the unexpected twists all the more thrilling. Great good fun. (Excellent plane / train reading - lots of short tales.)

Wild range of character's ages was impressively delivered as inner dialog was most of the writing.

The stories in this book deserve something between 3-4 stars. Some are really good and stick with you, e.g. "The End of the Party". Others are mediocre, such as "The Destructors". Most of the are OK though.

Not that good

I love this collection of short stories. I'll admit, I've tried to read "The Power and the Glory" about a million times and I just can't get through it, but Graham Greene's short stories are a much easier read for me. "The Destructors" is my favorite story in here.

Don't remember much about the stories in this one.

I can't pretend that there's a lot in here to really enjoy. There's a couple of good stories but there's some pretty mediocre stuff in here.

This is a very diverse collection of stories in content and theme. Largely they are haunting in some way, and thoughtfully constructed.

Admittedly I was given this book because of The Destructors but I enjoyed the whole collection. I can't say they were all equally good so it's very difficult to rate but I like his style, very dark and reminiscent of Dahl. Under the Garden in particular still haunts my memory after reading it 15 years ago!

This 1986 collection of 37 short stories combines three previously published volumes: Nineteen Stories (from 1947, though there are actually twenty-one here); A Sense of Reality (1963); and May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967). I suppose if you read enough Greene the styles and themes here will be familiar – he was amazingly consistent during his career, even when tinkering with perspectives and settings. As he does in all his longer works, he pays enormous attention to the details of relationships, while offering occasionally caustic observations and humorous commentary on culture and history. It’s possible some will see evidence of his evolution and maturing as a writer here, but it struck me that his earliest and latest stories had more in common than the stuff in the middle. Rather than unpack and dissect everything, I’ll just skim over a few highlights. The first book has the oldest and shortest stories, of which “When Greek Meets Greek” and “Alas, Poor Maling” were my favorites, probably because they were both quite funny. The middle book was more ponderous and meditative, incorporating more religion than the earlier volume, and its last story, “A Discovery in the Woods”, was a rich and haunting fable with echoes of “Lord of the Flies”. The final section was my favorite and had too many great stories to list here. I thought “Chagrin in Three Parts” came the closest to revealing Greene himself peeking out from behind his narrator, while “A Shocking Accident” was just flat-out funny and holds up well all these many years later. My mom was a Graham Greene fan and among her books that I’ve saved is a 1975 collection called “Shades of Greene”, which contained 18 stories adapted for British television. All of them are here, and without checking ahead of time, it wasn’t too difficult to guess which ones made it to the small screen. That’s another aspect of Greene’s writing I’ve only lately come to recognize: how easily his stories can transcend media, and have. Taken in its entirety it’s probably some degree short of his greatest books, but individual stories here compare quite well. Many would qualify as what he termed “entertainments”, and solidly so, and that’s usually what saves and elevates short story collections.

Early ones are almost unbearably grim. Latter ones are better. All are well-written, of course.

A good collection of stories written over quite a long period of time. Read them all fairly quickly and some of them were very short. My favorite story was The Blue Film. Other good ones included The Destructors, The Hint of an Explanation, Across the Bridge, The Basement Room and A Chance for Mr. Lever. Some of the stories that delt with the supernatural reminded my of Ambrose Bierce especially Proof Positive, and The End of the Party. Nice stories that made me want to read more Graham Greene.