Customer Reviews

Short Stories and The Unbearable Bassington (Oxford World's Classics)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Saki's style is Roald Dahl by way of P.G. Wodehouse, which sounds great, but he comes up far short on both counts, in my opinion. I did end up only skimming this book because nothing was grabbing me. The pervasive animal imagery is also not my thing. In "Unbearable Bassington," I didn't get past the first couple of pages as the title character was already living up to his adjective too thoroughly. A pity, as I'd expected much, having recently come across a wonderfully glib Saki quote somewhere: "A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation." (A quick Googling finds that seems to be his best line; a couple of other good ones are "He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death" and ""Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.")

It was great. My Favorite was the story titled the Interlopers? Wolves.. That was a good ending.