The Best of Saki (H.H. Munro)
- 1st ed.
- New Delhi Atlantic 2015
- 190
The book contains the best short stories written by Hector Hugh Munro under his pen name, Saki. “Reginald” was written after he had given up foreign reporting and settled in London. It features three short stories “Reginald at the Theater”; “Reginald on House Parties”; and “Reginald's Drama”. “Reginald in Russia” contains a number of interesting stories. “Gabriel-Ernest” uses the strain of animalist desire as an assessment to adolescence. “Cross-Currents” is the story of Vanessa Pennington, who has a poor husband and lives in extenuating circumstances. She also has an admirer who, though comfortably rich, is cumbered with a sense of honour. “The Mouse” is one of Saki's lighter and more purely humorous stories. It concerns a fussy and socially awkward man named Theodoric Voler and the difficulties he has when he is on a train and finds that there is a mouse climbing up the leg of his pants. In “Esme”, which appears under “The Chronicles of Clovis”, a Baroness tells Clovis about a hyena that she and her friend Constance encountered alone in the country side, and that she cannot resist the urge to stop for a snack. “Beasts and Super Beasts” features stories like “The She-Wolf”, “The Boar-Pig”, “The Brogue” and “Clovis on Parental Responsibilities” among other stories full of fun and humour. In “The Toys of Peace”, Eleanor, preferring not to give her young sons toy soldiers or guns, and having taken away their toy depicting the Siege of Adrianople, instructs her brother, Harvey to give them innovative “peace toys” as an Easter present. When the packages are opened, young Bertie shouts, “It’s a fort!” and is disappointed when his uncle replies, “It’s a municipal dustbin.” The boys are initially baffled as to how to obtain any enjoyment from models of a school of art and a public library, or from little figures of John Stuart Mill, Felicia Hemans and Sir John Herschel. The story depicts youthful inventiveness and ability to come in terms with reality. The stories have lured the readers for over a century and are read with interest all over the world.
9788124803288
Manners and customs Short stories, English Great Britain Greene, Graham, 1904-1991