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About the Author
I DID it-I should have known better. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AN INSIDIOUS ADDICTION,
By
This review is from: Saki, The Complete Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
The stories of H.H.Munro - better known by his pen-name of Saki - have scarcely been out of print since they were first published around a hundred years ago. Yet it often seems that their particular delights are reserved for the private pleasures of his coterie of admirers.It has to be admitted that a taste for Saki is something of an addiction. And, like all addictions, once acquired it is hard to give up. In the years since his tragic early death in the trenches of World War I at the hands of a German sniper, fellow addicts have included Graham Greene, Noel Coward and Tom Sharpe. All of us take a slightly wicked satisfaction from his biting wit and the subversive way in which he undermines the staid Edwardian society he purports to merely observe. But, to a much greater extent than his near-contemporaries, Wilde and Kipling, there is something dark and menacing at the heart of Saki's writing. Behind the refined tinkle of teacups on an Edwardian lawn can be heard the distant howling of a wolf. Hidden among the shrubbery in a carefully manicured garden lurk all kinds of Beasts and Superbeasts, ready to wreak Nature's revenge on an uncaring mankind with its arrogant belief in materialism, progress and the innate respectability of middle-class values. Where Kipling's Jungle Book menagerie tends to simple analogies of human types, Saki's animals can rise up with the full power of Pan himself. This is not to ignore Saki's ability to turn an aphorism with all the facility and wit of the divine Oscar at his best. Nor does it forget his ability to prick the inflated egos of louche young men with too much time and money on their hands or deliciously dotty aunts and duchesses with their minds firmly fixed on Empire and their Imperial responsibilities. It would be easy to argue that Munro foresaw the imminent collapse of this society into the cataclysm of the Great War. With his experience as a political journalist in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, he was probably more aware than most of the storm that was about to break over Europe. But essentially he was an observer of his fellow man. And it is for the humour of his observations, for the dazzling twists and turns his tales take and for the fact that he makes us laugh inordinately that he is to be treasured and why we addicts are prepared to share our secret vice with those who have yet to acquire the habit.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Edwardian society and magic,
By
This review is from: Saki, The Complete Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
I'm a huge fan of short stories and always read about as many short story collections per year as I do novels, by authors as diverse as Helen Simpson, David Sedaris, TC Boyle, Roald Dahl, Michel Faber, and Wells Tower, to the literary journal McSweeney's. I've heard of Hector Hugh Munro or Saki for a number of years but is one of those classic authors I'd never read that I decided to tackle this year. So how do his stories measure up a century after publication? Not bad, there were a few stories I enjoyed but on the whole they're unfortunately quite mundane.The ones I enjoyed showed Saki introducing macabre and mystical elements into his tales. "Gabriel-Ernest" is a great baroque story about a boy werewolf while "Sredni Vashtar" is about a boy who befriends a ferret only to create a pagan religion around it, then when his cousin gets rid of the ferret from the house he prays for the ferret-god to get rid of his cousin... then his cousin disappears! "The Peace of Mowsle Barton" is a story of a peaceful village of warring witches while the pagan theme continues in "The Music on the Hill" where an offering to the pagan god Pan is spoiled by an unwitting young woman who is then gored by a stag's antlers. There are also stories of hyenas in the English countryside ("Esme" and "The Quest") as well as talking cats ("Tobermory") all of which I really enjoyed. Then there are the bulk of the stories which are mostly about young people or children outwitting their elders. These stories are often about slight things like misunderstandings, like a gent who writes rhyming couplets about women, a pet monkey stealing lozenges, a woman transformed into a she-wolf (but not really). They're readable in that they're well written but they're not very compelling and I often found myself sighing at the almost punchline type ending to a story. Saki comes across as a very smart, self-aware writer of then-modern stories, but the stories don't measure up as well as they once did and as such don't have the same effect on the readers of today. Don't get me wrong, there are some good stories here but there are a number of stories here that don't sustain the level of storytelling or interest. Shame too as I really wanted to like Saki. I guess I just expected more to his work.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
clever and very very funny,
By A Customer
This review is from: Saki, The Complete Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
Saki's short stories have to be some of the best around. Most of them are funny and all of them are clever, having the added attraction of not becoming boring after one read. Some of the stories in this volume are in the form of monologues, especially on the part of Reginald, a character around whom Saki's earliest volume of stories were based. Another character who had much ink lavished upon him was Clovis Sangrail, whose poem, the Durbar Recessional, is surely unforgettable to those who have read it.Saki's short stories are as brilliant as when they were first published, even if the Edwardian society they satirized has long since vanished into the past.
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