Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Saki writes very short stories that look polite and end with a sting. A boy invents a ghost story at a window and scares a man out of the room. A tame ferret gets worshipped as a god. Werewolves, pigs, hens, and dinner guests all cause trouble. Each story is a little trap, set with a smile. You will finish one and have to read the next.
Munro took his pen name from the medieval Persian poet Sa'di and perfected a story form of his own: a few pages of polished Edwardian drawing room, an animal or a child or a charming liar at its center, and a final line that turns the whole thing slightly to the dark. This 1914 volume, his last story collection, holds thirty-four pieces, opening with The She-Wolf and closing with On Approval.
The famous ones deserve their fame: The Open Window, in which a nervous visitor is undone by a girl's ghost story; The Schartz-Metterklume Method, a governess imposture of beautiful cheek; Sredni Vashtar's companion pieces from earlier books aside, here are also The Boar-Pig, The Hen, The Lumber Room, and The Story-Teller, where a bachelor defeats an aunt with a story that is 'improper' in exactly the way children prefer.
Saki was killed by a sniper at Beaumont-Hamel in 1916, reportedly after ordering a man to put out a light. His stories are comedies with claws: the frivolity is real, and so is the contempt for cruelty, humbug, and dull power. Read two a day; they are rich.
Saki, the pen name of H. H. Munro, wrote short stories like beautifully set traps. In this 1914 collection you will find werewolves in the drawing room, a ferret god, a hen that starts a religion, and a small boy whose made-up romance ends a very real dinner party in The Open Window. Each tale is polished, funny, and faintly cruel, and each ends with a twist of the knife.
The first chapter
“The Open Window,” “The Schartz-Metterklume Method,” and “Clovis on Parental Responsibilities,” originally appeared in the Westminster Gazette, “The Elk” in the Bystander, and the remaining stories in the Morning Post. To the Editors of these papers I am indebted for their courtesy in allowing me to reprint them.
H. H. M.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1914. Author died 1916. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
Starvard