Tag: Graham Greene

April 2024 favorites

April 2024

The April stories ordered solely by my personal tastes.

  1. ‘The Basement Room’ by Graham Greene
  2. ‘Barn Burning’ by Haruki Murakami
  3. ‘Boys And Girls Like You And Me’ by Aryn Kyle
  4. ‘The Sea Latch’ by Cara Blue Adams
  5. ‘Hole’ by Andrew Porter
  6. ‘Face Time’ by Lorrie Moore
  7. ‘The Reverse Bug’ by Lore Segal
  8. ‘The Eclipse’ by Elizabeth Spencer
  9. ‘A Wet Day’ by Mary Lavin
  10. ‘Paradise’ by Edna O’Brien
  11. ‘The Swan’ by Roald Dahl
  12. ‘Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People’ by Lorrie Moore
  13. ‘The Disappeared’ by Andrew Porter
  14. ‘B.F. And Me’ by Lucia Berlin
  15. ‘By The Waters Of Babylon’ by Stephen Vincent Benét
  16. ‘A Thing At Work’ by George Saunders
  17. ‘I, Buffalo’ by Vauhini Vara
  18. ‘The Mom Of Bold Action’ by George Saunders
  19. ‘The Man Who Loved Islands’ by D.H. Lawrence
  20. ‘Draft Day’ by Rattawut Lapcharoensap
  21. ‘Texas’ by David Gates
  22. ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Claire Vaye Watkins
  23. ‘A Sheltered Woman’ by Yiyun Li
  24. ‘The Greatest Gift’ by Philip Van Doren Stern
  25. ‘Unknown Unknowns’ by Vauhini Vara
  26. ‘Chance The Cat’ by David Means
  27. ‘The Island’ by Tove Jansson
  28. ‘Island’ by Gretel Ehrlich
  29. ‘The Wisdom Of Eve’ by Mary Orr
  30. ‘Life Without Children’ by Roddy Doyle

As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.

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June 2021 favorites

June 2021

The June stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘A Dedicated Man’ by Elizabeth Taylor
  2. ‘A Success Story’ by Margaret Drabble
  3. ‘Butcher’s Perfume’ by Sarah Hall
  4. ‘The Boots At The Holly-Tree Inn’ by Charles Dickens
  5. ‘An Abduction’ by Tessa Hadley
  6. ‘Crossing The Alps’ by Margaret Drabble
  7. ‘The Lumber-Room’ by Saki
  8. ‘Lappin And Lapinova’ by Virginia Woolf
  9. ‘Summer 1976’ by Chris Power
  10. ‘Mortmain’ by Graham Greene
  11. ‘The Spring Hat’ by H.E. Bates
  12. ‘A Day In The Life Of A Smiling Woman’ by Margaret Drabble
  13. ‘The Gifts Of War’ by Margaret Drabble
  14. ‘If It Keeps On Raining’ by Jon McGregor
  15. ‘She Said He Said’ by Hanif Kureishi
  16. ‘The Pier Falls’ by Mark Haddon
  17. ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ by Margaret Drabble
  18. ‘G-String’ by Nicola Barker
  19. ‘Louise’ by Somerset Maugham
  20. ‘Let Me Count The Times’ by Martin Amis
  21. ‘Wolf-Alice’ by Angela Carter
  22. ‘Nadine At Forty’ by Hilary Mantel

As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.

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February 2021 favorites

February 2021

The February stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘A Family Supper’ by Kazuo Ishiguro
  2. ‘Filling Up With Sugar’ by Yuten Sawanishi
  3. ‘A Perfect Day For Kangaroos’ by Haruki Murakami
  4. ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ by D.H. Lawrence
  5. ‘Gómez Palacio’ by Roberto Bolaño
  6. ‘Two Gentle People’ by Graham Greene
  7. ‘The Confession’ by Leïla Slimani
  8. ‘A Family Like Any Other’ by Carlos Fuentes
  9. ‘The Kangaroo Communiqué’ by Haruki Murakami
  10. ‘The Adopted Son’ by Guy de Maupassant
  11. ‘The Lazy River’ by Zadie Smith
  12. ‘I Arrive First’ by Emma Jane Unsworth
  13. ‘Saint Julian The Hospitaller’ by Gustave Flaubert
  14. ‘Tell Them Not To Kill Me!’ by Juan Rulfo
  15. ‘The Switchman’ by Juan José Arreola
  16. ‘Kew Gardens’ by Virginia Woolf
  17. ‘The Hammam’ by Hervé Guibert

As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.

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January 2019 favorites

January 2019

The January stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘The Beginning Of A Long Story’ by Maeve Brennan
  2. ‘The Point’ by Charles D’Ambrosio
  3. ‘Guests Of The Nation’ by Frank O’Connor
  4. ‘Voices’ by Alice Munro
  5. ‘Dear Life’ by Alice Munro
  6. ‘The Enduring Chill’ by Flannery O’Connor
  7. ‘The Eye’ by Alice Munro
  8. ‘Armistice’ by Bernard Malamud
  9. ‘O Youth And Beauty’ by John Cheever
  10. ‘Real Estate’ by Lorrie Moore
  11. ‘Night’ by Alice Munro
  12. ‘The Trouble With Mrs. Blynn, The Trouble With The World’ by Patricia Highsmith
  13. ‘The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen’ by Graham Greene
  14. ‘The Slaves In New York’ by Tama Janowitz
  15. ‘Batman And Robin Have An Altercation’ by Stephen King
  16. ‘Tied In A Bow’ by Langston Hughes
  17. ‘The Stranger’ by Rainer Maria Rilke

As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.

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February 2015 favorites

February2015

February 2015

The February stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘Death In The Woods’ by Sherwood Anderson
  2. ‘Cheap In August’ by Graham Greene
  3. ‘Debarking’ by Lorrie Moore
  4. ‘The Juniper Tree’ by Lorrie Moore
  5. ‘Flight’ by John O’Hara
  6. ‘To Build A Fire’ by Jack London
  7. ‘Harvey’s Dream’ by Stephen King
  8. ‘The Keyhole Eye’ by John Stewart Carter
  9. ‘The First Flower’ by Augusta Wallace Lyons
  10. ‘Subject To Search’ by Lorrie Moore
  11. ‘Thank You For Having Me’ by Lorrie Moore
  12. ‘Foes’ by Lorrie Moore
  13. ‘Spring In Fialta’ by Vladimir Nabokov
  14. ‘Talk To The Music’ by Arna Bontemps
  15. ‘The Contest For Aaron Gold’ by Philip Roth
  16. ‘The Old Army Game’ by George Garrett
  17. ‘Alma’ by Junot Diaz
  18. ‘Children Are Bored On Sunday’ by Jean Stafford
  19. ‘A Long Day’s Dying’ by William Eastlake
  20. ‘To The Wilderness I Wander’ by Frank Butler
  21. ‘Mammon And The Archer’ by O. Henry
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‘Cheap In August’ by Graham Greene

Greene, Graham 1964

Cheap In August by Graham Greene, 1964

The magic trick:

Turning an unlikely relationship into a beautiful thing

This is not the likeliest of loves. True, Mary came to Jamaica with hopes of a vacation tryst, but the old man she hooks up with is described as splashing water “like an elephant” when she meets him. She is nearing the end of her youth. The man, a Mr. Hickslaughter, is nearing the end of his life. She is educated, full of philosophies on life. He is a schemer who can’t even remember the name of his favorite poem.

Greene pulls the couple together gradually, revealing surprising characteristics along the way about both people. Certainly, Mary is even lonelier and more desperate than we imagined at the beginning of the story.

What is amazing though, and ultimately is the story’s greatest gift, is Greene ability to use the relationship to both lower and raise Mary as a character. Even as we come to see her marriage as perhaps more hollow than we first thought, her encounter with the old man also paints her as tougher and more capable person than she was at the story’s outset. The relationship has served its purpose for both characters, and now they can move on with their lives, apart from each other but stronger for having been together. What began as an odd coupling becomes a beautiful thing. And that’s quite a trick on Greene’s part.

The selection:

It was as though she were discovering for the first time the interior of the enormous continent on which she had elected to live. America had been Charlie, it had been New England; through books and movies she had been aware of the wonders of nature like some great cineramic film with Lowell Thomas cheapening the Painted Desert and the Grand Canyon with his clichés. There had been no mystery anywhere from Miami to Niagara Falls, from Cape Cod to the Pacific Palisades; tomatoes were served on every plate, Coca-Cola in every glass. Nobody anywhere admitted failure or fear; they were like sins “hushed up” – worse perhaps than sins, for sins have glamour – they were bad taste.

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