May We Borrow Your Husband?: And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life

by Graham Greene

Paperback, 1992

Status

Available

Call number

823.912

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Penguin Classics (1992), Paperback, 144 pages

Description

Author William Harris is spending the fag-end of the season at Antibes finishing his first attempt at historical biography, but he becomes more and more interested and involved in the antics of two homosexual interior decorators intent on stealing Poopy Travis's honeymoon husband. Which leaves him free to fall in love with Poopy himself. A widow and a divorcee tipsily discuss the inadequacy of men, deciding that women have much more to offer each other by way of variety in sexual love. A wife holidays alone in jamaica's cheap season idly hoping for excitement but finding the only man she can have an affair with is far too old and frightened of the dark...Affairs, obsession, grand passions and tiny ardours - this collection contains some of Greene's saddest observations on the hilarity of sex.… (more)

Media reviews

NY Times

Elsewhere -- and he is unlikely to take this as praise -- he seems bent on showing us that he can take on Maugham at his own game and do it better. The comparison arises not merely from the fact that may of these stories are set in the south of France. It stems also from the nature of the narrator,

the elderly author, his sensual appetites attenuated to the appreciation of good wine and good cheese, who observes the passing scene and records it with a sort of romantic cynicism. So. in the title story, the narrator (working out of season at Antibes on a biography of the Earl of Rochester) watches two extremely unpleasant homosexuals seduce the male half of a honeymoon couple and make all the necessary arrangements for the taking over of their lives.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member AlexTheHunn

Collection of short stories, delightful to read. These little gems sparkle in their economy and brilliance of language. Greene's sophisticated humor consistently charms without cloying.

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LibraryThing member nmele

I had not read any of Greene's short fiction before this book. These stories are as advertised, except that the "comedies" of the title seems to be meant sardonically.

LibraryThing member jonfaith

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.

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