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May We Borrow Your Husband?: And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life
A dazzling exploration of love and loneliness by the author of 'The comedians', Naam op titelpagina / Name on title page, A Bantam Book / / English literature / Engels / English / Anglais / Englisch / Pocket / Poche / Taschenbuch / 10 x 18 cm / 149 .pp /
142 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
92 people are currently reading
868 people want to read
About the author
Graham Greene
800 books6,111 followersHenry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews
November 15, 2025
Dignity is not a robe which can be thrown on at will. It has no belt that we can knot or collar we can turn up. It doesn't hang from a hook behind our bedroom doors. It doesn't and won't wait for us there. So, with nothing to reach for in the dark, how do we face the indignities of life? Greene asks. His stories give some answers.
Start with a laugh. "A Shocking Incident" will shock you into it. "The Root of All Evil" and "Dr. Crombie" will keep them coming. Keep some tears for "Two Gentle People." It deserves the most. When an injured bird brings two strangers together, they "experienced a lifetime, which was measured as with butterflies in hours." Only then, go on to the title story in which Greene concludes:
"[T]he only love which has lasted is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship."
Wise words for those still looking for their robe.
Start with a laugh. "A Shocking Incident" will shock you into it. "The Root of All Evil" and "Dr. Crombie" will keep them coming. Keep some tears for "Two Gentle People." It deserves the most. When an injured bird brings two strangers together, they "experienced a lifetime, which was measured as with butterflies in hours." Only then, go on to the title story in which Greene concludes:
"[T]he only love which has lasted is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship."
Wise words for those still looking for their robe.
July 28, 2021
I think Graham Greene has converted me to short stories. Hard to pick a favorite from the 12 stories. The Root of all Evil and death by chamber pot was very funny. Some of the stories were very funny such as the eccentric Doctor Crombie and A Shocking Accident. I did wonder if a pig did fall from a Naples tenement and kill a passerby or whether Greene used his imagination.
May we borrow your husband poignant. The stories capture loneliness, love, kindness, compassion and lost dreams beautifully. Greene has such a witty and concise way of writing that captures the human condition wonderfully.
May we borrow your husband poignant. The stories capture loneliness, love, kindness, compassion and lost dreams beautifully. Greene has such a witty and concise way of writing that captures the human condition wonderfully.
November 4, 2025
“Eram ambos pessoas de meia-idade e nenhum deles inclinado a alimentar a ilusão de possuir uma juventude perdida, muito embora ele tivesse melhor aspecto do que aquilo que julgava, com o bigode sedoso de outra época, como se fosse uma insígnia de bom comportamento, e ela mais bela do que o espelho lhe dizia.
(...) O homem ergueu-se, pegando no chapéu-de-chuva como se fosse um chicote, e exclamou:
- Malditos garotos, malandros!
A frase pareceu eduardina, devido à ligeira entoação americana: Henry James com certeza que a poderia ter usado."
- Duas Pessoas Gentis
Graham Greene traz-nos uma dúzia de contos que podem sobretudo dividir-se em histórias de gente em viagem, seja em lua-de-mel, de férias ou em trabalho, e em relatos de conversas ouvidas em locais públicos ou contadas ao narrador por terceiros, com um cheirinho a má-língua. As comédias da vida sexual referidas no título nem sempre são levianas ou ligeiras, tendendo algumas, as melhores diga-se, para o engano e a amargura, mas desenvolvidas com muito sarcasmo e algum humor negro por um homem muito sabido e vivido.
Há vários contos bem conseguidos, mas há três que misturam de forma muito homogénea as características mencionadas: “Empresta-nos o seu marido?”, em que um casal de homossexuais tenta descaradamente conquistar um jovem recém-casado que não saiu do armário, “Um acidente chocante”, em que o protagonista se confronta com reacções díspares sempre que conta a forma inusitada como o seu pai morreu, e “Em Agosto é mais barato”, sobre uma mulher de férias na Jamaica, longe do marido, em busca de uma aventura amorosa que assume contornos inesperados. O melhor fica para o fim, como de costume, em “Duas Pessoas Gentis”, um encontro perfeito em 11 páginas, uma relação inteira em poucas horas.
“- Meu caro, adivinha lá quem me escreveu?
- Alec?
- Não, Mrs. Clarenty.
- Que quer o estafermo da velha?
-Protesta contra a decoração do quarto.
- Mas, Stephen, é uma coisa deliciosa. Alec nunca fez nada tão belo. Velha tonta...
- Presumo que deseja qualquer coisa mais núbil e menos necrófilo.
- A libertina da velha! (...)
Os dois decoradores olhavam sem tocar nas bebidas (...). Claro que nem um nem outro olhavam sequer para a rapariga, mas sim para o rapaz. (...) Pareceu-me que ambos eram demasiados jovens para se casarem – duvido que juntos perfizessem 45 anos -, e senti desejos de me encostas à varanda para lhes gritar:
- Neste hotel, não. Qualquer outro que não seja este.
(...) Foi a primeira vez que me apeteceu intervir, e não os conhecia de parte nenhuma. Da segunda vez já era tarde.
- Empresta-nos o Seu Marido?
(...) O homem ergueu-se, pegando no chapéu-de-chuva como se fosse um chicote, e exclamou:
- Malditos garotos, malandros!
A frase pareceu eduardina, devido à ligeira entoação americana: Henry James com certeza que a poderia ter usado."
- Duas Pessoas Gentis
Graham Greene traz-nos uma dúzia de contos que podem sobretudo dividir-se em histórias de gente em viagem, seja em lua-de-mel, de férias ou em trabalho, e em relatos de conversas ouvidas em locais públicos ou contadas ao narrador por terceiros, com um cheirinho a má-língua. As comédias da vida sexual referidas no título nem sempre são levianas ou ligeiras, tendendo algumas, as melhores diga-se, para o engano e a amargura, mas desenvolvidas com muito sarcasmo e algum humor negro por um homem muito sabido e vivido.
Há vários contos bem conseguidos, mas há três que misturam de forma muito homogénea as características mencionadas: “Empresta-nos o seu marido?”, em que um casal de homossexuais tenta descaradamente conquistar um jovem recém-casado que não saiu do armário, “Um acidente chocante”, em que o protagonista se confronta com reacções díspares sempre que conta a forma inusitada como o seu pai morreu, e “Em Agosto é mais barato”, sobre uma mulher de férias na Jamaica, longe do marido, em busca de uma aventura amorosa que assume contornos inesperados. O melhor fica para o fim, como de costume, em “Duas Pessoas Gentis”, um encontro perfeito em 11 páginas, uma relação inteira em poucas horas.
“- Meu caro, adivinha lá quem me escreveu?
- Alec?
- Não, Mrs. Clarenty.
- Que quer o estafermo da velha?
-Protesta contra a decoração do quarto.
- Mas, Stephen, é uma coisa deliciosa. Alec nunca fez nada tão belo. Velha tonta...
- Presumo que deseja qualquer coisa mais núbil e menos necrófilo.
- A libertina da velha! (...)
Os dois decoradores olhavam sem tocar nas bebidas (...). Claro que nem um nem outro olhavam sequer para a rapariga, mas sim para o rapaz. (...) Pareceu-me que ambos eram demasiados jovens para se casarem – duvido que juntos perfizessem 45 anos -, e senti desejos de me encostas à varanda para lhes gritar:
- Neste hotel, não. Qualquer outro que não seja este.
(...) Foi a primeira vez que me apeteceu intervir, e não os conhecia de parte nenhuma. Da segunda vez já era tarde.
- Empresta-nos o Seu Marido?
June 10, 2016
What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom.
4.5 stars. This was a necessary return. If I felt younger at present, this collection would've spared me its wrench. Who are my favorites anymore, aside from Dylan? As to authors, my grasp remains firm around Balzac and Grass. Greene speaks to the faded but civilized self that keeps buggering along. These are stories of nostalgia and regret. The hapless find destiny and mumble as it passes them by. Greene made happy if wistful here. I do regard him as a master. There are reckless steps and then a measured glimpse. There's a salty sniff of locale -- most of the stories occur in the south of France, a powerful one in Jamaica.
4.5 stars. This was a necessary return. If I felt younger at present, this collection would've spared me its wrench. Who are my favorites anymore, aside from Dylan? As to authors, my grasp remains firm around Balzac and Grass. Greene speaks to the faded but civilized self that keeps buggering along. These are stories of nostalgia and regret. The hapless find destiny and mumble as it passes them by. Greene made happy if wistful here. I do regard him as a master. There are reckless steps and then a measured glimpse. There's a salty sniff of locale -- most of the stories occur in the south of France, a powerful one in Jamaica.
July 26, 2021
There is an unmistakable sense of sadness in this collection of stories, a kind of melancholia that belies what its tongue-in-cheek name seems to suggest - wicked situations of adultery and infidelity. That is, of course, to be expected - Greene, for all his ribaldry and impulsive belligerence, both as a person and as a storyteller, was also never far from being aware always of sadness and solitude, of wistful nostalgia and yearning for not only love and lust but also companionship, a sense of belonging. He and his characters are forever adrift, seeking some permanency in a world where allegiances are false, relationships are built on shallow foundations and the temptation to betray, to cheat and to be disloyal infects not only the people on which these characters pin their hopes but themselves too.
And yet, how beautiful, how exquisitely beautiful does this sadness feel. In his wonderful tribute to the everlasting influence and resonance of Greene and his works, Pico Iyer muses out aloud at one point that the very words, "May We Borrow Your Husband" might sound, to an American, as cheeky and full of seductive mischief while the same, to an Englishman, which Greene was himself, would reek of a subtle layer of decadence, of solitude and melancholia stemming from an inner yearning for any companionship, not necessarily that of sharing a bed. And so, these stories, to a large extent, apart from the brilliantly sustained title story, which is amusing, coolly sarcastic, romantic and even touchingly compassionate all at the same time (not to forget the writer's flawless flair at atmosphere, which is to be found in spades elsewhere too), are all about that jaded, disillusioned yet all-too-human feeling of loneliness and longing for love and friendship and how frequently does life itself disappoint one in these very pursuits.
And while that might sound as if these are weighty, even murky affairs, trust me - they are anything but gloomy. Enlivened at every turn with Greene's elegantly clipped English wit and, as said before, a heady allure of a foreign place - most stories feature Antibes but there is Jamaica and a whiff of Naples as well as our good old England as well, this collection is also the writer actually at his most tongue-in-cheek and hilarious, gently chuckling at the shenanigans that unfold in each story and also clicking his tongue with some amused regret. Again, like everything else from the writer, these stories keep on surprising, even startling the reader without warning. Not all deal mainly with infidelity and the sexual life; some are outrageous farces crammed with slapstick, others are reflective and wry and present nostalgic portraits of boyhood in suburban England and yet all of them deal, in some sense, with that feeling of longing and solitude. From middle-aged men and women seeking some thrilling, some possibly naughty, escape from their humdrum lives to a newly married couple "haunted" by an old flame, from schoolboys being taught the ills of pleasuring themselves by an eccentric but still friendly doctor to a shocking accident that warrants more amusement than sorrow, these are all, at heart, as much about the trademark theme of a yearning for companionship and compassion as any of his novels.
And yet, like the best and most profound and clever of short stories, from masters like Saki and Chekhov, they are all devilishly wicked, poignantly romantic, gently mischievous and endlessly entertaining as well - ending just when they should end, leaving us all with both closure and ambiguity. Just try and guess what lies in that BOAC overnight bag and keep on reading till the end to see if Greene will tell you the secret. Or not.
And yet, how beautiful, how exquisitely beautiful does this sadness feel. In his wonderful tribute to the everlasting influence and resonance of Greene and his works, Pico Iyer muses out aloud at one point that the very words, "May We Borrow Your Husband" might sound, to an American, as cheeky and full of seductive mischief while the same, to an Englishman, which Greene was himself, would reek of a subtle layer of decadence, of solitude and melancholia stemming from an inner yearning for any companionship, not necessarily that of sharing a bed. And so, these stories, to a large extent, apart from the brilliantly sustained title story, which is amusing, coolly sarcastic, romantic and even touchingly compassionate all at the same time (not to forget the writer's flawless flair at atmosphere, which is to be found in spades elsewhere too), are all about that jaded, disillusioned yet all-too-human feeling of loneliness and longing for love and friendship and how frequently does life itself disappoint one in these very pursuits.
And while that might sound as if these are weighty, even murky affairs, trust me - they are anything but gloomy. Enlivened at every turn with Greene's elegantly clipped English wit and, as said before, a heady allure of a foreign place - most stories feature Antibes but there is Jamaica and a whiff of Naples as well as our good old England as well, this collection is also the writer actually at his most tongue-in-cheek and hilarious, gently chuckling at the shenanigans that unfold in each story and also clicking his tongue with some amused regret. Again, like everything else from the writer, these stories keep on surprising, even startling the reader without warning. Not all deal mainly with infidelity and the sexual life; some are outrageous farces crammed with slapstick, others are reflective and wry and present nostalgic portraits of boyhood in suburban England and yet all of them deal, in some sense, with that feeling of longing and solitude. From middle-aged men and women seeking some thrilling, some possibly naughty, escape from their humdrum lives to a newly married couple "haunted" by an old flame, from schoolboys being taught the ills of pleasuring themselves by an eccentric but still friendly doctor to a shocking accident that warrants more amusement than sorrow, these are all, at heart, as much about the trademark theme of a yearning for companionship and compassion as any of his novels.
And yet, like the best and most profound and clever of short stories, from masters like Saki and Chekhov, they are all devilishly wicked, poignantly romantic, gently mischievous and endlessly entertaining as well - ending just when they should end, leaving us all with both closure and ambiguity. Just try and guess what lies in that BOAC overnight bag and keep on reading till the end to see if Greene will tell you the secret. Or not.
August 25, 2021
This was uneven for me – I liked some of the stories and weren’t too fond of at least one, and the others were ‘meh’. But it all averaged out to 3 stars.
May We Borrow Your Husband? – 2.5 stars
• I was not too fond of this first eponymous story. Was Graham Greene homophonic? He portrayed two gay men as predatory towards a newly married man…I think in that time period, gay men and women were openly bashed so I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. Still, in 2021, to consider this a comedy? Nope. 🙁
Beauty – 2 stars
Chagrin – 1 star
• This story might be OK if you are conversant in the French language. I am not, so I did not comprehend the French text interspersed throughout the story. I guess it was important to the point of the story because knowing only English I could not understand the point of the story. 🙁
The Overnight Bag – 3.5 stars
• This was referred to in a short story that I read over the weekend: Barcelona (by Philip Langeskov) in the Best British Short Stories- 2014. In ‘Barcelona’, the Graham Greene short story was part of the plot, and was a story-within-a-story. A man boards a plane with a duffle bag of sorts and lays it on the seat next to him and an annoying woman near him wants to know what it is, and he says it is a dead baby. Pretty bizarre, eh? 😮
Mortmain – 3 stars [Originally published in Playboy]
Cheap In August – 3 stars
A Shocking Incident – 4 stars
• 😐
The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen – 1.5 stars
Awful When You Think About It – 3 stars
Doctor Crombie – 4.5 stars
• Funny. Pretty humorous…you have to read it. 😉
The Root of All Evil – 3.5 stars
• Another funny story. A bunch of men in a small town want to drink together because they don’t like to drink alone, but they want to exclude one of the men in the town because he is annoying. So, they form a secret society and that is the start of their troubles. Pretty funny how Graham Greene tells the story.
Two Gentle People – 4.5 stars [Originally published as “The Secret’ in the magazine Vogue]
• Two lonely people meet on a park bench. They are both married to somebody else, and I think unhappily. They have a nice dinner together, but the woman knows it can be nothing more. So, they leave it at that, rather than try and pursue something more which would only then then gum up the works. At least they had a nice dinner and were able to connect with each other, albeit for a brief period.
Note: Other short stories in this collection published in Saturday Evening Post, Show, Status, Esquire, and Rogue.
Review:
• https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim...
May We Borrow Your Husband? – 2.5 stars
• I was not too fond of this first eponymous story. Was Graham Greene homophonic? He portrayed two gay men as predatory towards a newly married man…I think in that time period, gay men and women were openly bashed so I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. Still, in 2021, to consider this a comedy? Nope. 🙁
Beauty – 2 stars
Chagrin – 1 star
• This story might be OK if you are conversant in the French language. I am not, so I did not comprehend the French text interspersed throughout the story. I guess it was important to the point of the story because knowing only English I could not understand the point of the story. 🙁
The Overnight Bag – 3.5 stars
• This was referred to in a short story that I read over the weekend: Barcelona (by Philip Langeskov) in the Best British Short Stories- 2014. In ‘Barcelona’, the Graham Greene short story was part of the plot, and was a story-within-a-story. A man boards a plane with a duffle bag of sorts and lays it on the seat next to him and an annoying woman near him wants to know what it is, and he says it is a dead baby. Pretty bizarre, eh? 😮
Mortmain – 3 stars [Originally published in Playboy]
Cheap In August – 3 stars
A Shocking Incident – 4 stars
• 😐
The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen – 1.5 stars
Awful When You Think About It – 3 stars
Doctor Crombie – 4.5 stars
• Funny. Pretty humorous…you have to read it. 😉
The Root of All Evil – 3.5 stars
• Another funny story. A bunch of men in a small town want to drink together because they don’t like to drink alone, but they want to exclude one of the men in the town because he is annoying. So, they form a secret society and that is the start of their troubles. Pretty funny how Graham Greene tells the story.
Two Gentle People – 4.5 stars [Originally published as “The Secret’ in the magazine Vogue]
• Two lonely people meet on a park bench. They are both married to somebody else, and I think unhappily. They have a nice dinner together, but the woman knows it can be nothing more. So, they leave it at that, rather than try and pursue something more which would only then then gum up the works. At least they had a nice dinner and were able to connect with each other, albeit for a brief period.
Note: Other short stories in this collection published in Saturday Evening Post, Show, Status, Esquire, and Rogue.
Review:
• https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim...
April 20, 2017
Really 2 and a half stars. Although most of the stories were well-written, many had such nasty characters that I really did not enjoy reading them. The only story I truly liked was "Cheap in August."
April 4, 2022
An odd little collection, these stories are sometimes funny, but mostly sad. Many involve a lonely writer. I particularly liked the humor of "A Shocking Incident" and "The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" and the wistfulness of "Two Gentle People." However, most the stories left me cold.
December 31, 2022
The title story is about two bitchy gay interior decorators (of course interior decorators; it was the 1950s) stealing a clearly closeted man away from his new wife on their honeymoon; I was like, I'm rooting for the gays! But the story is actually not not rooting for them: Greene, while far from the most enlightened man to ever live, is equally cynical toward everybody -- and then, at key moments, equally sympathetic too. And in fact there are a surprising number of nuanced portraits of queer people in this book, particularly queer women.
Though there are some forgettable entries, there are also a lot of winners: besides the title story, I really liked the surprisingly sweet "A Shocking Accident," and the German farce, "The Root of All Evil." I've missed reading Greene so this is a fun toe-dip back in.
Though there are some forgettable entries, there are also a lot of winners: besides the title story, I really liked the surprisingly sweet "A Shocking Accident," and the German farce, "The Root of All Evil." I've missed reading Greene so this is a fun toe-dip back in.
Read
October 26, 2022dnfed :/
February 28, 2015
Graham Greene gets a bad rap among those who haven't actually read many of his books, as he tends to be viewed as an author of thrillers--the Robert Ludlum of his day, perhaps. But every time I read one of his books, I re-realize how unfair this is. Sure, he can write a good thriller, but he was also an amazing literary author. May We Borrow Your Husband & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life is a great compilation of short stories about relationships, mostly gone horribly, horribly wrong. Considering the stories were originally copyrighted from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, some (like the title story) seem very risque in their thinly veiled depictions of sex, while others, like "Two Gentle People," are sweet and melancholy tales that will resonate with anyone who has ever had a passing crush. Others, like "Mortmain," are wickedly funny, yet still tragic. Overall, these stories are fairly grim, but well worth a read.
October 9, 2015
Damn. Goodreads bugged and now I have to re-write my review. I don't really feel like it, and besides, the inspiration's gone. Anyway, below is the gist of what the original review said:
A good collection of stories, a quick read, and a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
Highlights include (read: my favourites of the bunch are):
- The title story, May We Borrow Your Husband? (which is written very much the way W. Somerset Maugham wrote his short stories; I had to keep reminding myself that it was in fact a Graham Greene story).
- A Shocking Accident
- Doctor Crombie
- The Root Of All Evil
This collection of stories is included in Penguin Classics' edition of Graham Greene's Complete Short Stories.
A good collection of stories, a quick read, and a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
Highlights include (read: my favourites of the bunch are):
- The title story, May We Borrow Your Husband? (which is written very much the way W. Somerset Maugham wrote his short stories; I had to keep reminding myself that it was in fact a Graham Greene story).
- A Shocking Accident
- Doctor Crombie
- The Root Of All Evil
This collection of stories is included in Penguin Classics' edition of Graham Greene's Complete Short Stories.
July 13, 2021
I'm calling this "gay" because the title story (the longest in the collection) and a few others have gay characters. Of course, given the times we don't see these characters from inside, only from the POV of others (ie, someone refers to "those nancies").
I usually rail against stories which suffer from the "undisclosed first person narrator syndrome". This collection is almost completely infected with the syndrome, yet somehow does not suffer from it. Perhaps it is merely a host, a carrier, but not sick itself from the condition.
The reader carries knowledge of who the "middle-aged writer" might be, and imports this knowledge into the text, so we are not left completely wondering. He is a self-described voyeur, and overhears conversations in restaurants and reports these things to us (this may be a bit of a nod to Greene's intelligence background). One still has to wonder what the first person narrator contributes to the narrative in most of these pieces. The detached observer only ... observes, but remains untouched.
Stories of their time, from a talented writer. 3.5 stars rounded down because feeling mean, and Graham Green doesn't care what I think.
I usually rail against stories which suffer from the "undisclosed first person narrator syndrome". This collection is almost completely infected with the syndrome, yet somehow does not suffer from it. Perhaps it is merely a host, a carrier, but not sick itself from the condition.
The reader carries knowledge of who the "middle-aged writer" might be, and imports this knowledge into the text, so we are not left completely wondering. He is a self-described voyeur, and overhears conversations in restaurants and reports these things to us (this may be a bit of a nod to Greene's intelligence background). One still has to wonder what the first person narrator contributes to the narrative in most of these pieces. The detached observer only ... observes, but remains untouched.
Stories of their time, from a talented writer. 3.5 stars rounded down because feeling mean, and Graham Green doesn't care what I think.
November 3, 2014
This book is one of my favorites because it contains the most beautiful love-story I ever read: "Two Gentle People". Has many other great stories as well.
January 24, 2022
There’s a world apart from the young Greenes emotionally high strung teenage gangster drama Brighton Rock from 38 which I read last year, to the mature slightly cynical man of the world in the mid sixties, writing these stories, what they do have in common is a masterful grasp of the language and a way of conveying emotions and atmosphere in a few words.
This collection is mostly concerned with sex,or at least the talk about it and mostly concerning English people abroad, apart from “A shcocking accident” which is hilarious, the stories are. bittersweet and sad in a charming way.
It’s also a nostalgic view into a world where traveling abroad really meant meeting foreign people and customs.
Highlights:
May we borrow your husband - a small tale of a writer who witnesses a homosexual couple seducing a newly wed man, while falling in love with the young wife and at the same time realising he’s too old for her.
A shocking accident - I wonder what happened to the pig… hilarious in a understated way.
Cheap in August- A middle aged women goes on a vacation alone with the intention of having an affair, but ends up comforting a sad old man, which somehow provides her with more satisfaction than an affair.
Two gently people - a bittersweet masterpiece about a brief encounter between two elderly strangers.
This collection is mostly concerned with sex,or at least the talk about it and mostly concerning English people abroad, apart from “A shcocking accident” which is hilarious, the stories are. bittersweet and sad in a charming way.
It’s also a nostalgic view into a world where traveling abroad really meant meeting foreign people and customs.
Highlights:
May we borrow your husband - a small tale of a writer who witnesses a homosexual couple seducing a newly wed man, while falling in love with the young wife and at the same time realising he’s too old for her.
A shocking accident - I wonder what happened to the pig… hilarious in a understated way.
Cheap in August- A middle aged women goes on a vacation alone with the intention of having an affair, but ends up comforting a sad old man, which somehow provides her with more satisfaction than an affair.
Two gently people - a bittersweet masterpiece about a brief encounter between two elderly strangers.
October 28, 2018
This story collection, published in 1967, when Graham Greene was in his early sixties, is probably his most consistent. 21 STORIES is quite stunning in its range, A SENSE OF REALITY is a bit too steeped in fantasy to highlight Greene's insight into human nature, but MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND (subtitled "& Other Comedies Of The Sexual Life") adheres to a theme Greene had become, in late middle-age, to be quite comfortable with.
This is one book in which Greene downplays (almost to the point of eliminating) his penchant for cloak-and-dagger. Thirty years earlier, when he was already an established author, he'd consciously put his comedic tendency aside. It pops up in the forties and begins to glide comfortably in the late 1950s, but in the mid-sixties, Greene fell into stride with the times, allowing comedy and, in particular, sexually knowing comedy, to soar. His most overtly comic novel, TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, followed this collection in 1969. It's a commonplace to say that Britain went Technicolor in 1963 or so, after all the years of Austerity. I must quote Philip Larkin's lines:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
The Swinging Sixties gave us a Graham Greene who would have fit into a Pink Panther movie. The characters in these stories tend to move from hotel to hotel, sharing drinks on patios overlooking grand staircases by the sea. Having read all his novels and two of his other story collections (with one to go, the one published just before he died, THE LAST WORD) I can also say that MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND is essentially the only book he put out dealing in any detail with the reality of homosexuality. Lesbianism is discussed in a coded way in his early 1930s novel STAMBOUL TRAIN, and, in 1978, Greene allows a paragraph (quite literally) about a Soviet spy whose paymasters provide with male companionship, but nowhere else in his fiction (I have not read his criticism or memoirs yet) does he broach the subject. This is most unusual in a mid-twentieth-century author. I do not mean that Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer or, say, Updike, dealt sympathetically with gay characters or themes, but they made a fair amount of passing references to homosexuality. Greene, I think deliberately avoided it, but not for reasons of prudishness or false machismo. I believe that he had affection for oppressed groups. Since, until about the mid-sixties, almost all mainstream writers professed disapproval of homosexuality, Greene's way around the issue was not to mention it at all. I don't even find sublimated gay themes in his books (with, again, the exception of STAMBOUL TRAIN), and when finally gays and lesbians are featured prominently in Greene's fiction, it is in a collection with a title story dealing with the tension between straights and gays. In the five or six years before the Stonewall riots, movies, books and plays were suddenly treating gays and lesbians as if they were three-dimensional people. This had not been the case in middlebrow works until then. (Proust is highbrow and therefore impervious to popular outrage.)
I also think that Greene was waiting until his literary skill caught up to his talent for observation before writing these stories. (These stories were all products of the 1960s; it is not a collection of disparate pieces.) It's pretty clear to me Greene was straight (and by all accounts, including his own, highly sexed) but even when he is showing bad people doing bad things and the characters happen to be gay, his is not a voice of condemnation. "May We Borrow Your Husband?" is one of the most realistic stories I've ever read, evocative though it is of its lush surroundings. Again, Britain had gone Technicolor. These stories are highly visual and almost resemble gaudy postcards. I need to point out that Greene IS the British element here. Most of the stories are set in vacation spots far away from the UK. Greene was also dodging taxes, of course, but almost any successful writers, moviemakers or musicians from Britain at that time moved away. He was not an exception in this.
Greene converted to Catholicism as a young man and one has to bear in mind that the biblical view of homosexuality was well-known to him. So if he does not seem to condone male homosexuality, it is more that he believes in holding back from temptation and not that he does not understand the temptation. But I am not prepared to say he disapproves of homosexuality. He is nuanced. "May We Borrow Your Husband?" is pretty dispassionate. Its narrator is rather disapproving, but Greene shows the narrator playing his part in the comedy. In another story Greene is quite sympathetic to a lesbian couple. (This is a sympathy he hadn't shown in STAMBOUL TRAIN, that much earlier work.)
Greene's great ability with descriptions of landscape is on display here. His world is seen more clearly than almost any other writer's. It is hard to write about walls and lawns and the surf without getting boring. Greene has never bored me when he describes landscape. Almost all other writers do.
This is one book in which Greene downplays (almost to the point of eliminating) his penchant for cloak-and-dagger. Thirty years earlier, when he was already an established author, he'd consciously put his comedic tendency aside. It pops up in the forties and begins to glide comfortably in the late 1950s, but in the mid-sixties, Greene fell into stride with the times, allowing comedy and, in particular, sexually knowing comedy, to soar. His most overtly comic novel, TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, followed this collection in 1969. It's a commonplace to say that Britain went Technicolor in 1963 or so, after all the years of Austerity. I must quote Philip Larkin's lines:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
The Swinging Sixties gave us a Graham Greene who would have fit into a Pink Panther movie. The characters in these stories tend to move from hotel to hotel, sharing drinks on patios overlooking grand staircases by the sea. Having read all his novels and two of his other story collections (with one to go, the one published just before he died, THE LAST WORD) I can also say that MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND is essentially the only book he put out dealing in any detail with the reality of homosexuality. Lesbianism is discussed in a coded way in his early 1930s novel STAMBOUL TRAIN, and, in 1978, Greene allows a paragraph (quite literally) about a Soviet spy whose paymasters provide with male companionship, but nowhere else in his fiction (I have not read his criticism or memoirs yet) does he broach the subject. This is most unusual in a mid-twentieth-century author. I do not mean that Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer or, say, Updike, dealt sympathetically with gay characters or themes, but they made a fair amount of passing references to homosexuality. Greene, I think deliberately avoided it, but not for reasons of prudishness or false machismo. I believe that he had affection for oppressed groups. Since, until about the mid-sixties, almost all mainstream writers professed disapproval of homosexuality, Greene's way around the issue was not to mention it at all. I don't even find sublimated gay themes in his books (with, again, the exception of STAMBOUL TRAIN), and when finally gays and lesbians are featured prominently in Greene's fiction, it is in a collection with a title story dealing with the tension between straights and gays. In the five or six years before the Stonewall riots, movies, books and plays were suddenly treating gays and lesbians as if they were three-dimensional people. This had not been the case in middlebrow works until then. (Proust is highbrow and therefore impervious to popular outrage.)
I also think that Greene was waiting until his literary skill caught up to his talent for observation before writing these stories. (These stories were all products of the 1960s; it is not a collection of disparate pieces.) It's pretty clear to me Greene was straight (and by all accounts, including his own, highly sexed) but even when he is showing bad people doing bad things and the characters happen to be gay, his is not a voice of condemnation. "May We Borrow Your Husband?" is one of the most realistic stories I've ever read, evocative though it is of its lush surroundings. Again, Britain had gone Technicolor. These stories are highly visual and almost resemble gaudy postcards. I need to point out that Greene IS the British element here. Most of the stories are set in vacation spots far away from the UK. Greene was also dodging taxes, of course, but almost any successful writers, moviemakers or musicians from Britain at that time moved away. He was not an exception in this.
Greene converted to Catholicism as a young man and one has to bear in mind that the biblical view of homosexuality was well-known to him. So if he does not seem to condone male homosexuality, it is more that he believes in holding back from temptation and not that he does not understand the temptation. But I am not prepared to say he disapproves of homosexuality. He is nuanced. "May We Borrow Your Husband?" is pretty dispassionate. Its narrator is rather disapproving, but Greene shows the narrator playing his part in the comedy. In another story Greene is quite sympathetic to a lesbian couple. (This is a sympathy he hadn't shown in STAMBOUL TRAIN, that much earlier work.)
Greene's great ability with descriptions of landscape is on display here. His world is seen more clearly than almost any other writer's. It is hard to write about walls and lawns and the surf without getting boring. Greene has never bored me when he describes landscape. Almost all other writers do.
January 2, 2016
One call tell a great writer from the short stories. Graham Greene is a great writer and this is a very good collection of stories about human relations. In the opener, Greene introduces us to a very devious fairy couple (interior designers) who seduce a newly wed man from his wife. In the funniest story we can have a glimpse at the very strange goings on among the burgers in a provincial German town. Overall these stories remind me of Roald Dahl's My Uncle Oswald. However, Greene is much more serious than Dahl and the mood of the book is autumnal. The last tale of a fleeting moment between two strangers in Paris is the key story in this book of bittersweet stories about the realization of life's disappointments by an Englishman abroad.
January 23, 2022
Surprisingly funny, conditional achievements for short stories in this Graham Greene compendium. He allows his characters to have little protests against life without a solution for their woes. They take it on the chin in that relatively old-hat style, but Greene feels ahead of the curve with May We Borrow Your Husband? since his characters taking punch after punch is demonstrable, rather than commendable. Seeing it happen again and again, different scenarios coming and going with hopeless characters grinning and bearing it is sickeningly funny. A few great lines here or there really stick out. The boy whose father is crushed by a pig asking if the beast is okay, the man who only knows a woman by the name of "Poopy" and the rather dark short story of an overnight bag. It's bizarre, freakish and thoroughly entertaining.
August 26, 2023
Classic Graham Greene. I had to read Greene in high school (Brighton Rock) and I should really write a personal letter of thanks to my English Literature teacher for the fine introduction. I can't seem to stop reading Graham Greene! The stories in this volume are not for the easily offended or the politically correct, but are for anyone else who enjoys subtle humor, especially authors.
August 31, 2024
Zeer vermakelijk! En wat is Greene weer een scherp observator. De personages en intriges die hij beschrijft zie je als een film voor je en vergeet je ook niet gauw meer.
February 25, 2015
Mid 20th century "Comedies of the Sexual Life" by an Englishman. I've been dragged to enough community theater to loathe "English sex farce". So I was leery. But the book was on my shelf so it was getting read, at least some of it.
The title sucked me right in. The narrator of that story is an late middle-aged English ex-pat writer living on the French Rivera writing about people he met there. Somerset Maugham covered that ground really well and often. Greene does it a bit better than Maugham.
I don't know if I would call the title story or any of the others comedies but in the sense that none of them ended like Hamlet with everyone dying, I guess they weren't tragedies.
The next two stories also take place in Antibes and share the same magic. After that things get a little rocky. "The Overnight Bag" really had no point whatsoever, I reread the thing twice but I didn't miss anything. So that pissed me off a little.
The remaining stories vary between great and pure crap ("Doctor Crombie" and especially "The Root of all Evil").
For the most part, the stories are quick, fun, breezy, but not shallow reads. The great ones are great and for the most part the clunkers at least aren't very long.
This collection reminds of an album with several amazing great songs and bunch of filler songs. It's a shame the filler was included (I guess to give people their money's worth), they take a 5 star book down to 3 stars. People would buy and pay as much for a 30 minute great album as they would for 50 minute album with 30 minutes of great songs. But whatcha gonna do?
The title sucked me right in. The narrator of that story is an late middle-aged English ex-pat writer living on the French Rivera writing about people he met there. Somerset Maugham covered that ground really well and often. Greene does it a bit better than Maugham.
I don't know if I would call the title story or any of the others comedies but in the sense that none of them ended like Hamlet with everyone dying, I guess they weren't tragedies.
The next two stories also take place in Antibes and share the same magic. After that things get a little rocky. "The Overnight Bag" really had no point whatsoever, I reread the thing twice but I didn't miss anything. So that pissed me off a little.
The remaining stories vary between great and pure crap ("Doctor Crombie" and especially "The Root of all Evil").
For the most part, the stories are quick, fun, breezy, but not shallow reads. The great ones are great and for the most part the clunkers at least aren't very long.
This collection reminds of an album with several amazing great songs and bunch of filler songs. It's a shame the filler was included (I guess to give people their money's worth), they take a 5 star book down to 3 stars. People would buy and pay as much for a 30 minute great album as they would for 50 minute album with 30 minutes of great songs. But whatcha gonna do?
February 15, 2022
The title story deserves 4 stars as it is one of the greatest gay-themed stories ever! (It is included in some such anthologies). It involves the author’s longing for a much younger woman who has arrived at his hotel in Antibes on her honeymoon and the manoeuvres of a gay couple also staying there to seduce her handsome husband. There is comedy here as the farcical title indicates but also tragedy at the wife’s confusion in her marriage and the writer’s own confused state of mind between helping her and dealing with his own desires.
Unfortunately the remaining stories come across as a bit stuffy and old-fashioned but in the characters of the witty interior decorators Stephen and Tony, Greene has written an accurate and truthful depiction of an aspect of gay life that existed at a certain period of time - and probably still does!
Unfortunately the remaining stories come across as a bit stuffy and old-fashioned but in the characters of the witty interior decorators Stephen and Tony, Greene has written an accurate and truthful depiction of an aspect of gay life that existed at a certain period of time - and probably still does!
October 31, 2020
Una serie di racconti vivaci e divertenti, il cui punto di forza sta nell'originalità delle trame e nello humour sofisticato, tipicamente inglese. Non ho mai letto nulla di Greene e so che ha spaziato in molti generi, dal thriller alla saggistica: devo dire che anche come scrittore di racconti se la cava benissimo, in poche pagine riesce a costruire delle storie accattivanti; probabilmente il merito è dei dialoghi brillanti, che danno verve alla storia e rendono i protagonisti credibili nelle loro eccentricità.
Un testo leggero, che però assolve in pieno alla sua funzione di divertire con intelligenza.
Un testo leggero, che però assolve in pieno alla sua funzione di divertire con intelligenza.
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February 25, 2019I feel like this represents Greene cutting loose and having some fun, with most of the stories being essentially slightly long-winded jokes. This being Greene though, a lot of the stories are still suffused with a pervading sense of melancholy (most notably in the title story, as well as Cheap in August and Two Gentle People).
November 19, 2017
Απολαυστικός Greene, όχι στις βαθιά φιλοσοφημένες στιγμές του βέβαια, αλλά πάντως ευφυής, είρων, διεισδυτικός. Συλλογή διηγημάτων με κωμική-ειρωνική νότα, στο στυλ του "Ο άνθρωπός μας στην Αβάνα", λεπτό χιιούμορ, σκιαγράφηση χαρακτήρων, γενικά ένα πολύ ευχάριστο και αξιοπρεπές ανάγνωσμα
April 5, 2017
The other side I love about Greene is his dry, poignant humour found in these stories about sex and relationships.
January 9, 2023
always beware the homosexuals of antibes
May 1, 2023
(PT) Graham Greene conta algumas histórias sobre as relações humanas, algo do qual ele se tornou muito bom, com contos onde o drama e a comédia andam de mãos dadas.
July 3, 2024
Some good stories in there but the whole collection is a bit drawn out and not the most engaging.
September 16, 2024
Sublime, subtle and funny
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