Twenty-One Stories

Oh, Graham Greene, a man of so many stories and things to say. How I wish that my first interaction with him hadn’t been for my A-Levels, reading The Heart of the Matter, which I still haven’t found the courage to return to to this day. Not that it was taught to me terribly, but it’s so depressing.
Even though, let’s be real, his other work can be just as depressing, too.
But there’s something oddly whimsical about his short stories.
There are 21 short stories in this aptly-named collection, all dealing with vastly different themes. Not all of them are complete winners, but they’re all rather memorable. There’s a story about a man who’s stomach mimics the noises it hears, another about a group of hooligan boys who tear an show more old man’s house to shred simply because they can, and another about a man who contracts a deadly disease and lives long enough to speak about it before dying at a conference of that same disease. But in this review I’d like to talk to you about three of the stories in particular.
“When Greek Meets Greek” is a fantastically hilarious story about two men who think they are duping the other in a scam they have organized. One of the men has started up a fake university, which he will use to convince young men fighting wars abroad to enrol into for incredible amounts of money and then send them a degree that is, quite obviously, fake. He enlists his niece to help him do this, and she soon strikes up a relationship with their first student, a young man recently out of prison pretending to be one such soldier, all as a part of his father’s scheme to get him an education.
“The Blue Film” is one of the shortest in the collection, the story of an elderly couple on holiday in an Asian country (possibly India, although don’t hold me to it on that one) that decide to watch a raunchy ‘blue film’ (for all intents and purposes, a porno). While watching it, the wife suddenly realizes that the man in the film is her husband, decades younger. While he tries to explain to her that he only did it for the money, it is also revealed to the audience that he was also possibly in love with his co-star.
Finally, “The End of the Party” is the story of two twin brothers, quite young (eleven, I believe) who are invited to the birthday party. One of the brothers is terribly afraid of the dark, and the other is definitely the braver of the two. While at the party, a game of hide and seek ensues, and the brothers are separated. When the braver one finds his twin cowering in the dark, his twin telepathy tells him that something is amiss, and all is revealed when the lights come on again to help everyone see their way.
Honestly, all three of these stories sound completely different from each other, and they quite are, but Greene’s amazing writing style comes out in all of them, and the little twists and turns that the stories take, and amusing anecdotes that he writes, are so well-crafted.
I highly recommend this book, especially to someone who thinks that they don’t like Greene’s work, because I think that this might just change your mind. I give it a solid 4/5. show less

There are two heavyweights in 21 Stories, a collection gathered from 25 years of Greene's career. The first of these is The Destructors. I must have read it close to ten times before. Its remaining regard in pop culture was established by it being the philosophical vertebrae for the film Donnie Darko. The other tower is The Basement Room which was the basis for Greene's screenplay for the film The Fallen idol. The riveting story of innocence and misunderstanding was later masterfully realized by Carol Reed. This was around the time that Reed and Green were globetrotting and gathering items for the Circus (MI-6).

The surprise of 21 Stories had to be Greek Meets Greek which oddly didn't concern the EU bailout but instead was a wartime show more encounter of schemers, which anticipates the ascent of online universities, and culminates in a hilarious doubled-edged farce. The remainder of the collection comprise an uneven lot, largely surrounding familiar themes in Greene's work: guilt, betrayal, greed and grief. show less

“Bleak” is the way I’d describe the general tone here. Several stories are told from a child’s point of view: in “The Basement Room,” the boy Philip learns to betray the butler Baines, who’s befriended him, when the unpleasant Mrs. Baines is accidentally killed; in “The End of the Party,” a twin can still sense the fear of his brother after the brother has died of fright; and in “The Destructors,” we’re treated to the mind of an amoral fifteen-year old who destroys, with the help of his gang, a house possibly built by Christopher Wren. There is an element of supernatural horror in “The End of the Party” and in “A Little Place Off the Edgeware Road” reminiscent of M. R. James or H. P. Lovecraft. “The show more Hint of an Explanation” is Christian apologetics like The End of the Affair or Chesterton. “A Chance for Mr. Lever” has a middle-class character meeting the jungle à la Conrad or Maugham. A few of the stories are grimly funny, as when the children out-con the parents in “When Greek Meets Greek,” or when Mr. Ferraro is diddled out of the 36,892 days of plenary indulgence his secretary Miss Saunders is supposed to be amassing for him. show less

My favourite story here is "Across the Bridge". Yes, it's a gringo on the run in Latin America story and that can get tiring. But Greene does it better than most.

Greene employs a narrator, who meets the protagonist and then tells his story in a detached, unreliable way. He learnt this from Conrad I'd say. The main problem the narrator has with the conman protagonist is how he treats his dog. There is some local colour about sitting in the plaza - but this is Greene: he sketches the atmosphere and then gets us involved in the plot.

"The Basement Room' filmed as the "The Fallen Idol" is also excellent. I'm happy that the movies "Across the Bridge and "The Fallen Idol" have good reviews. I thought I'd seen all the good Graham Greene film show more adaptions already.

"The Destructors" is good. It reminded me of Robert Westall's "The Machine Gunners". Beyond that the stories, many of them about Catholic doubts and childhood fears, range from pretty good average.

Update: the movie "Over the Bridge" starts with Greene's idea and develops it a great deal. Could have been a great novel. Rod Steiger plays the protagonist. He must be one of the few American actors to star in movies both as a German (Over the Bridge) and as a German (Last Days of Mussolini). show less

Graham Greene is a much better novelist than short story writer. In my youth I loved his tales of dispirited, tired old men. Now that I am a tired old man, not so much.

Mostly tales from the Depression and the blitz focusing on lower class London. Graham writes so well he made these alomost bearable. The Mexico story was the best.

With so much historical fiction on offer, it has been a pleasure to read some contemporary books too. The quality of the stories in this collection varies, but this has been an enjoyable, if dark, read.