The Complete Fiction

by Francis Wyndham, Alan Hollinghurst (Introduction)

In his more than eighty years, Francis Wyndham has published very little—one novella and two collections of stories—but his is one of the most individual and compelling bodies of work by a contemporary English writer. As Alan Hollinghurst has said, Wyndham’s fiction stands in the tradition of social comedy that goes back through Henry James to Jane Austen, with this difference: Wyndham writes about the lives of privileged and even titled people, but he is drawn to outcasts and odd ducks, adolescents, lonely women, addicts, eccentrics, and idlers.

The earliest stories here, gathered under the title Out of the War, are brilliant vignettes of deprivation and desire written during World War II. The later Mrs Henderson and Other Stories, by contrast, offers scrupulously observed tragicomic pictures of the vagaries of upper-class English family life. Finally, in the Whitbread Prize–winning short novel The Other Garden, a shy teenage boy living in the country strikes up an unlikely friendship with Kay, the thirty-something daughter of neighbors, sister to a famous actor, and black sheep of her family. Kay, with her whims and crazes and boyfriends, is unable to hold her own against her family’s disapproval, and the narrator watches with helpless fascination as her small but very real tragedy is played out against the background of the Second World War.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century, Classics

360 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 1992

Reviews

[William Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long time critic/reviewer for Times Literary Supplement, Francis Wyndham is the best writer you’ve never heard of. He only published 3 books of fictions in his life—and they’re all in the NYRB Complete Fiction: Mrs Henderson (several short to longer stories); the novella The Other Garden (-00 pages), and his first collection, Out of the War, interconnected stories set during WW2. All are brilliant. Sad, funny, very British. Barbara Pym meets Anita Brookner (but less sad, much as I adore her work) with a touch of Alive Munro.

Read it now. And read it again.

[lapetitesouris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the years I've found a genuine love for NYRB. I picked this one up, intrigued by the back blurb and by reading a few lines from the stories to see if they'd hook me (they did). I was not disappointed.

This is a collection of Wyndham's work spanning 40 years (three collections in one).

The last set were written in his teens during the war, and he describes the time as: "Many people pass their adolescence in an emotional void, waiting for something - anything - to happen, and wondering with increasing desperation if it ever will. In wartime, everyone not directly involved with the fighting found themselves in a similar state of suspension." This sense of suspension is the theme of many of his stories.

They are also a celebration of what he later describes as wanting to "write about the hours and hours and hours, the enormous proportion of life which is spent in a kind of limbo, even in people's active years. It seems to me that it isn't sufficiently celebrated".

These stories left an imprint on my heart and I know I'll return to them often. Adored this one.


"As a young girl this excitement (of the beginning of term) had deepened to a more urgent sensation,
for she had felt that her social life depended entirely on the schoolboys. Now she realised that for some time they had semed children to her; she was the contemporary of the masters now, no longer that of the pupils. Iris felt sure that she would never get used to that idea."

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow Wyndham lures us into the world of the English upper middle class of the war years, the second world war. We are unmistakably in the 40s, the dreary surroundings compensated for by the fact that obsequious servants can attend to the comforts that make life bearable. The clever thing though is that there’s usually a character on the periphery who is an obvious misfit, bound to suffer the consequences of not quite “fitting in”.

[Tanja · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of stories. Some are absolute knockouts. 'The Other Garden' is heartbreakingly beautiful. I really liked 'The Half Brother' as well. A number of the stories are interconnected, through people, events and villages. I still felt like I could have read more about the characters. I wanted to know how it all played out.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the earlier stories are not quite as polished as the later fiction, but still a full five stars for being exactly my sort of thing. Very glad I took a chance on this unknown-to-me author, and thankful for NYRB for collecting and republishing it.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes sad but always delicious.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Mrs Henderson": 8
- Would be useful as an exercise for students: find the least submerged of hidden motivations. Otherwise, written with the droll ease of certain CW-era English fiction, which means very little for the success or not of this particular slice of buggered public school life.

"Obsessions": 8
- Neither social commentary nor bon-vivant decalogue, and more a comedy of classed manners, in which another prep school boy befriends another wealthy classmate, making friends with, above all, the female family members. And works in that slyly expository mode.

[Graychin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The NYRB Classics edition includes Francis Wyndham’s two short story collections and his novella The Other Garden. I’ve written a separate review of the latter. Here, I’ll only say that it’s a shame Wyndham didn’t write and publish more. “Mrs Henderson,” “Obsessions,” and “The Half Brother” are strange, delightful, and flawless. The stories collected in Out of the War are also good, and especially remarkable in that they were written when Wyndham was still a teenager.

3.5 stars

[Jorge · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his ambiguous proximity to queerness, self-effacing wryness, and worship of classic Hollywood ephemera, Francis Wyndham's work reminds me of bands that I was really into in university, like The Smiths and Belle & Sebastian. A lot of this comes off as pleasant, yet slight and inconsequential, but some of his short stories, like "Ursula," are very touching; and, in general, he's got a good eye for the sympathetic outcasts of upper-middle-class society.

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took so long to get into this but it was distinctive and excellent once I did.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories about more or less ordinary people living around the peripheries of the two world wars. Subtle stories, well-observed and not without their own quirks. The later collection of short stories, MRS HENDERSON AND OTHER STORIES and the novella THE OTHER GARDEN are solid gold; the earlier short stories, OUT OF THE WAR are not all equally good, but very much of a piece with the later works in overall tone and emphasis. The later short story collection shows a far wider range, encompassing picaresque, tenderness and in one brilliant instance, the fantastic. Both later pieces compare well with Isherwood's Berlin novels which overlap with these in a number of ways.

[Bette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually don't enjoy short stories that much, since just as I'm settling in and getting to know the characters, the story ends. I never felt that way about the stories in this collection, for two reasons: first, my interest was immediately piqued by the first page of each story, and second, the characters often reappear in other stories, so the feeling of "I wonder what happened after that" is diminished. Wyndham's portrayal of complicated, quirky, and often lonely women is quite sympathetic.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

More great stuff from NYRB.

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice phrases and passages here and there, but not much more. Minor writing par excellence.