Complete Short Stories

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2 SEPT 1996

There is already a Collected Stories, as brought together by the author himself, available in Penguin at less than a third the price of this volume (which is presumably aimed at the academic market). His daughter Lucia, who includes here a number of stories Graves omitted from his 1964 collection, presumes he left them out for lack of space. If so, it was an odd choice; for, as she points out, at least a couple of them, "Esta en su Casa" and "Bins K to T," are among his better efforts, the first a Majorcan tale of rivalry and revenge, the second an extended Edwardian anecdote about a wine-lover's will. On the whole, however, the story is not an area where Graves shines. He once confessed that "pure fiction is beyond my imaginative range," and most of the examples here are accounts, only slightly fictionalized, of things that either happened to him or to his friends and acquaintances. A rather pawky British humor is often in evidence, and the most cherishable tales are generally anecdotes that reflect his affection for Majorca and its people: "A Bicycle in Majorca" and "God Grant Your Honor Many Years" are good examples. But most of the stories are old-fashioned in the worst sense, and this collection will likely be of interest only to devoted Graves admirers.