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Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance
A well-intentioned English family unwittingly becomes complicit in state violence while traveling through China. A ploddingly respectable London lawyer chances upon a stash of cocaine and realizes it offers the wealth and status he's always hungered for. A salesman in Africa gets caught up in a riot, and a Palestinian suicide bomber has a moment of self-doubt. Kneale transports readers across continents in a nanosecond, reaching to the heart of faraway societies with rare perceptiveness. With wry humor and razor-sharp satire, these twelve thought-provoking stories illuminate the moral uncertainty of our time.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
8 people are currently reading
246 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Kneale
20 books171 followersMatthew Kneale was born in London in 1960, read Modern History at Oxford University and on graduating in 1982, spent a year teaching English in Japan, where he began writing short stories.
Kneale is the son of writers Nigel Kneale and Judith Kerr, and the grandson of essayist and theatre critic Alfred Kerr.
Kneale is the son of writers Nigel Kneale and Judith Kerr, and the grandson of essayist and theatre critic Alfred Kerr.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
April 28, 2019
Looking at the newspaper review of this, I see a variety of interpretations including the obvious one. Nice white people turning life into shit for others, not directly intentionally, but nonetheless doing so.
But it seems to me there is a completely different way of looking at this collection of short stories. They are all about negativity and how that affects behaviour and the course of life. Whilst I’d be the first to distance myself from the delusional ‘think positive’ that has been imposed upon the American population in order to aid the dismantling of their society, at the same time, ‘think negative’ is at least as bad.
The first story sees a nice white family think the worst of the Chinese person hanging out the moment something goes wrong. They think he has stolen from him. Well, he hasn’t, the mother has simply misplaced something. But by then it’s way too late. Chinese person is dead, having been reported to the authorities by the family. If their mindset hadn’t been negative in the first place, none of this would have happened. There is, too, the negativity which sets off the trip in the first place. We don’t go on the right trips….
The last story is about a would-be Palestinian suicide bomber. Only ‘would-be’ because he wimps out, after thinking in a very negative way about what he is doing which leads to a stalled climax. He ends up in the worst place, caught, no doubt with some dreadful punishment to come, and nothing to show for it.
rest is here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...
But it seems to me there is a completely different way of looking at this collection of short stories. They are all about negativity and how that affects behaviour and the course of life. Whilst I’d be the first to distance myself from the delusional ‘think positive’ that has been imposed upon the American population in order to aid the dismantling of their society, at the same time, ‘think negative’ is at least as bad.
The first story sees a nice white family think the worst of the Chinese person hanging out the moment something goes wrong. They think he has stolen from him. Well, he hasn’t, the mother has simply misplaced something. But by then it’s way too late. Chinese person is dead, having been reported to the authorities by the family. If their mindset hadn’t been negative in the first place, none of this would have happened. There is, too, the negativity which sets off the trip in the first place. We don’t go on the right trips….
The last story is about a would-be Palestinian suicide bomber. Only ‘would-be’ because he wimps out, after thinking in a very negative way about what he is doing which leads to a stalled climax. He ends up in the worst place, caught, no doubt with some dreadful punishment to come, and nothing to show for it.
rest is here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...
August 18, 2009
This is such an excellent collection to read while traveling. His characters make decisions based on fear, comfort, self-aggrandizement and ignorance, and it's fascinating to read how things unfold from each unreliable narrator's perspective. Amazing how travel can often bring out the worst in us, even when we think we're doing our best. :-) Kneale is now included in my list of amazing short story writers. I need to get my hands on his other books.
(PS - Thanks, Iris, for lending me this book on the stinky rickety Sapa-Hanoi train!)
(PS - Thanks, Iris, for lending me this book on the stinky rickety Sapa-Hanoi train!)
October 13, 2025
Stone -4 stars. Affluent English family gets pulled into some moral uncertainty with an accusation in rural China
Powder -3 Affluent English family chooses some moral uncertainty with drugs in London
Leaves -3 Western colonial intervention forces a poor family into moral uncertainty in Latin America
*Somebody messed up the artwork on Leaves, 'leaving' one short on the cover page... OCD reader nightmare
Weight -3.5 Affluent American imports 'love' from rural China, but soon finds how jealous he is over his prize.
Pills -4 Affluent westerners in rural Ethiopia give some false hope to locals
Metal -5 Affluent English businessman has a moral wobble on a visit to an unnamed African state.
Taste - 3 Affluent English housewife suspects a foreign maid of stealing from her, so goes to confront her and has a wobble.
Connected to Metal through Gerald's work, but a poorer sibling as a story.
Sound -2 White Englishman feels threatened by a dark-skinned man on the street, so decides to act.
Sunlight -2 Affluent English couple finds their Italian fantasy interrupted by perhaps-devious locals.
Seasons -3 Group of English lads get together to see off one who is being sent to fight somewhere Middle-Eastern
Numbers -2 Affluent American weapons scientist's wife has a moral wobble, then all is ok.
White -1 Islamic suicide-bomber has moral wobbles on his way to Tel Aviv
Nothing in the collection, except perhaps Metal, quite lives up to the excellence of the intriguing title.
Powder -3 Affluent English family chooses some moral uncertainty with drugs in London
Leaves -3 Western colonial intervention forces a poor family into moral uncertainty in Latin America
*Somebody messed up the artwork on Leaves, 'leaving' one short on the cover page... OCD reader nightmare
Weight -3.5 Affluent American imports 'love' from rural China, but soon finds how jealous he is over his prize.
Pills -4 Affluent westerners in rural Ethiopia give some false hope to locals
Metal -5 Affluent English businessman has a moral wobble on a visit to an unnamed African state.
Taste - 3 Affluent English housewife suspects a foreign maid of stealing from her, so goes to confront her and has a wobble.
Connected to Metal through Gerald's work, but a poorer sibling as a story.
Sound -2 White Englishman feels threatened by a dark-skinned man on the street, so decides to act.
Sunlight -2 Affluent English couple finds their Italian fantasy interrupted by perhaps-devious locals.
Seasons -3 Group of English lads get together to see off one who is being sent to fight somewhere Middle-Eastern
Numbers -2 Affluent American weapons scientist's wife has a moral wobble, then all is ok.
White -1 Islamic suicide-bomber has moral wobbles on his way to Tel Aviv
Nothing in the collection, except perhaps Metal, quite lives up to the excellence of the intriguing title.
November 10, 2011
Matthew Kneale is a powerful writer with the ability to immediately draw in the reader to the worlds of his characters. The stories he tells are all widely divergent in place but each are meticulously presented with casual intimacy and startling detail. Moral dilemmas,ethical lapses, choice points and long term consequeces are all covered here.
Kneale has a delicious sense of irony and his liquid prose is unflinching. He neither apologizes nor turns away from the absurd and ultimately endearing attempts of his players to reconcile abberent behaviors, shining a light into the wavery depths of human nature.
Kneale has a delicious sense of irony and his liquid prose is unflinching. He neither apologizes nor turns away from the absurd and ultimately endearing attempts of his players to reconcile abberent behaviors, shining a light into the wavery depths of human nature.
January 14, 2011
Some stories are really interesting, such as "Stone", "Powder", "Sound" and "White" (Stone and White being the most powerful ones in my opinion). They show how one small action, as small as an angry look, can change things and have such consequences for you or the people around. MAkes you want to think things through a little bit more, and not judge people too quickly.
Read
July 30, 2011Only read the first one or two stories. Don't really feel inspired to read more.
May 5, 2018
Amazing. New favourite book and author. One of the best collections of short stories I’ve read in a long time.
January 13, 2018
Having read a lot of short fiction over the years, I was very impressed with this collection. It is on par in terms of storytelling with Andre Dubus and to me that is elite company. These stories are compelling and have wonderfully vivid characters. As good as any collection I've read recently and better than most.
July 8, 2022
A mixed bag of short stories with the standouts (the arms dealer, the family in China) outnumbered by some much less compelling ones. I like his style: unshowy and humorous, but I kept hoping for a thread that connected the stories - there were echoes across the pieces but the whole collection almost felt less than the sum of its parts.
February 11, 2024
Interesting collection of a dozen short stories. Most of these stories have a similar feel - ordinary people caught up in uncertain events that unsettle & throw them out of kilter with the world as they see it. Nothing challenging here, just engaging stories that for the most part are quite well written.
September 4, 2024
Pulled this off the shelf when I was filling some bags to drop off at my local thrift store and ended up reading it over an afternoon. It's weird how a random little book can capture your attention in a reading slump, even if it's not that good.
February 7, 2025
DNF at 60%
I've had the print book for years and tried reading it about 15 years ago. Tried it again yesterday, and well, the stories are meh at best and not enough to keep going. So my sense of it back then does match today's view. Hm.
I've had the print book for years and tried reading it about 15 years ago. Tried it again yesterday, and well, the stories are meh at best and not enough to keep going. So my sense of it back then does match today's view. Hm.
December 22, 2019
Un régal pour les amateurs de nouvelles
February 16, 2020
This was a quirky read but fun and easy. Most of the stories were entertaining and interesting...others not so much.
April 4, 2023
This is an excellent collection of short stories. It’s very different from Passengers or Pilgrims, but ever bit as compelling. The characters, twists, and writing are all very enjoyable.
January 4, 2020
Kneale writes characters that are entirely too true to life, the horribleness the more striking with how mundane and realistic it is. But still, the stories felt flat to me, not emotionally engaging enough to pull me in. Plus, the problem with a collection that focuses on small crimes of everyday people is that after awhile you expect the punchline, deadening what might have been otherwise a satisfying reveal.
August 10, 2012
SMALL crimes can have big consequences, according to Matthew Kneale.
Kneale studied history at Oxford in his native England.
Among his books are two historical novels, one of which, English
Passengers, won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2000.
He also has a penchant for travel, which shows in his new collection of short fiction. The 12 stories are set in England, China and Italy, among other places.
His main characters are ordinary people. Each makes an all-too-human mistake, assumption, or flat-out lie that ripples through the rest of the story. And Kneale likes to play the reader’s sympathies for the characters against one another.
In Stone, the Winter family, envious of their neighbours’ self-guided vacations, embark on an “adventurous” trip through China. The overconfident Mr. Winter quickly gets them lost in an area where almost no one speaks English.
An eccentric local (dubbed Eeyore) takes them under his wing, but when some of Mrs. Winter’s jewels go missing, he becomes the prime suspect. After wrangling with the local police, who are all too eager to lock up Eeyore if it will make their town seem tourist-friendly, the Winters realize the jewels were buried in their luggage.
But by this time, Eeyore has “confessed” to the police, and in order to leave town, the Winters must sign a statement that they saw him do it — which they didn’t. Rather than lose even more vacation time, they sign it and get on with their trip, leaving Eeyore to his fate.
The notion of ethics figures prominently in Kneale’s stories, and the irony is often piercing.
In Powder, Peter Pelham, a mediocre London solicitor, comes across a bag full of cocaine and a cellphone ringing with customers. After prolonged indecision, Peter keeps the bag.
Later, he sells some; then he gets his wife in on it; and so forth, until they catch their children at a party they’re making a delivery to. It’s a beautifully awkward moment, as the Pelhams fume at their own hypocrisy.
The collection strikes a balance between humour and tragedy. Kneale puts the reader in the shoes of an overjealous newlywed, a frustrated author, an arms dealer, a tribeswoman with a dying child, and many others.
For all their faults, the characters are people we can laugh at, care about and fear for. Kneale fleshes out a few details, using dialogue sparingly, yet the portraits are convincing.
The book ends with the chilling White, which puts a human face on a suicide bombing. Knowing what Yunis, the main character, intends doesn’t stop the reader from understanding his motives — and hoping that he will somehow find a way to avoid going through with it.
An engaging collection, Small Crimes will have the reader snickering at its characters one moment, and taking a long look in the mirror the next.
Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press, Sunday, March 25, 2005
Kneale studied history at Oxford in his native England.
Among his books are two historical novels, one of which, English
Passengers, won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2000.
He also has a penchant for travel, which shows in his new collection of short fiction. The 12 stories are set in England, China and Italy, among other places.
His main characters are ordinary people. Each makes an all-too-human mistake, assumption, or flat-out lie that ripples through the rest of the story. And Kneale likes to play the reader’s sympathies for the characters against one another.
In Stone, the Winter family, envious of their neighbours’ self-guided vacations, embark on an “adventurous” trip through China. The overconfident Mr. Winter quickly gets them lost in an area where almost no one speaks English.
An eccentric local (dubbed Eeyore) takes them under his wing, but when some of Mrs. Winter’s jewels go missing, he becomes the prime suspect. After wrangling with the local police, who are all too eager to lock up Eeyore if it will make their town seem tourist-friendly, the Winters realize the jewels were buried in their luggage.
But by this time, Eeyore has “confessed” to the police, and in order to leave town, the Winters must sign a statement that they saw him do it — which they didn’t. Rather than lose even more vacation time, they sign it and get on with their trip, leaving Eeyore to his fate.
The notion of ethics figures prominently in Kneale’s stories, and the irony is often piercing.
In Powder, Peter Pelham, a mediocre London solicitor, comes across a bag full of cocaine and a cellphone ringing with customers. After prolonged indecision, Peter keeps the bag.
Later, he sells some; then he gets his wife in on it; and so forth, until they catch their children at a party they’re making a delivery to. It’s a beautifully awkward moment, as the Pelhams fume at their own hypocrisy.
The collection strikes a balance between humour and tragedy. Kneale puts the reader in the shoes of an overjealous newlywed, a frustrated author, an arms dealer, a tribeswoman with a dying child, and many others.
For all their faults, the characters are people we can laugh at, care about and fear for. Kneale fleshes out a few details, using dialogue sparingly, yet the portraits are convincing.
The book ends with the chilling White, which puts a human face on a suicide bombing. Knowing what Yunis, the main character, intends doesn’t stop the reader from understanding his motives — and hoping that he will somehow find a way to avoid going through with it.
An engaging collection, Small Crimes will have the reader snickering at its characters one moment, and taking a long look in the mirror the next.
Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press, Sunday, March 25, 2005
December 1, 2010
few good ones here
china tourist, misreported crime missing jewels - living with consequence when apparent thief executed.
middle class middle aged man falls into drug dealing.
some others seem thrown together
the villa renovation
the bomber
each story had a single turning point - almost different versions of one concept
china tourist, misreported crime missing jewels - living with consequence when apparent thief executed.
middle class middle aged man falls into drug dealing.
some others seem thrown together
the villa renovation
the bomber
each story had a single turning point - almost different versions of one concept
Read
December 11, 201290% of this was a fabulous read, not that I'd want to be any if Kneale's characters of course, always coming a cropper once they venture outside their sphere of safety. - he's an eloquent story teller and seems perfectly at home setting these tales in china, Ethiopia, Israel or the US - simply splendid little potted tales for the commute home.
August 18, 2009
I enjoyed these stories, which are set all over the world, but they suffered a little in comparison to the scope of his wonderful English Passengers. It's not a fair comparison, but there you go.
December 9, 2009
My favorite stories were “Powder,” and “Sound,” respectively. Something about their dully enlightened family men excitedly toying with crime. The rest were good, if not completely memorable, and I’m pretty sure at least two made me never want to travel foreign countries again, so. A success?
July 13, 2015
- found in the Bargain Bin of McNally Robinson's ($2), 2/3 of these stories are really wonderful
- the first, about the trip to China, was perfect...an excellent story line, with plausible characters, well-paced, and with an unexpected plot twist...I was completely engaged.
- the first, about the trip to China, was perfect...an excellent story line, with plausible characters, well-paced, and with an unexpected plot twist...I was completely engaged.
November 26, 2010
Don't normally like short stories but this was good.
August 10, 2011
Surprenantes nouvelles très modernes.
January 5, 2012
Urggh, horrible, clunky prose. Hurt to read it.
February 28, 2013
It was OK.
December 24, 2013
Smásagnasafn eftir þennan snilling. Ágætis stöff en nokkuð risminna en snilldarskáldsögurnar English Passangers og Sweet Thames.
July 28, 2015
This is one of my favorite short book of short stories. I read years ago but characters and story line pop up in my head on a regular basis.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews