Complete Short Stories
Saki's Edwardian comedies of manners are among the most perfectly constructed stories in English; the twist arrives with the inevitability of natural law. Wildly entertaining, deeply weird. Think P.G. Wodehouse distilled through bile.
The dosage problem is real: readers who buy the complete 900-plus-page edition and read it cover to cover say the stories start to bleed together, and more than one wishes they'd bought the slimmer NYRB selected volume instead, since one reviewer admits it might “dissuade anyone from actually reading this gargantuan compendium.” Binge readers report the twist-ending structure turning predictable after a dozen stories, with a chunk of the lesser-known pieces reading as mundane or interchangeable, and “the book bogged down in the middle.” The Edwardian diction and period slang can be genuinely hard going too, one reader saying the language felt “rather like tongue-twisters.” Period-typical prejudice surfaces occasionally as well, jarring against the otherwise light tone.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
