Complete Short Stories

This collection of short stories spans Graham Greene's career, from the 1920s to 1990. Many pick up on the same themes prevalent in his novels, especially the experience of World War II in Britain, life in Africa, Mexico, and the non-western world, and, to a lesser extent, the struggle of the reflective person with faith.

I hadn't read much of Greene's short fiction, and this gave me a chance to see a different side of him. Short stories give him a chance to focus tightly on particular personality traits or particular tensions -- it's something I think he's really good at. This is the kind of fiction that makes you think as well as entertains.

There were a few surprises for me in this collection. In particular, the short story, Under the show more Ground, presented a kind of disquieting surreal experience -- something I wasn't used to from Greene's novels, which tend to live in noirish themes or in the tension of political or religious faith. It turns out that that story is part of a collection with a running surreal theme, something I hadn't seen in his novels.

The quality of the stories run from the finely finished to the sketchy, but that's okay. This is another side of Greene that's well worth trying out. show less

This collection did not do it for me. I found the stories to be generally tedious and written offhandedly, without any serious development of theme or depth to them. For me, none of them really struck out as memorable or worth reading again. Nevertheless, they had their simple charms, but that is all.

2 stars.

Mixed bag.
Review to follow.