A small collection, fourteen short stories from Saki. All of them weird. They start like a normal story, usually in a rural part of England, big houses, dogs, hunting, invitations to drink tea, but then the story kind of goes of track. There is “Esme”, the story of a baroness that finds whilst hunting a hyena that then eats a gipsy child without anyone lifting an eyebrow or “The Open Window” where a young girl lies to a visitor about her aunt, uncle and cousins, explaining that they are dead just before they arrive back from hunting. Very sarcastic and funny reading.
“Calmness under misfortune is not an attribute of either hen-folk or womenkind, and while Mrs. Saunders declaimed over her onion bed such portions of the slang dictionary as are permitted by the Nonconformist conscience to be said or sung, the Vasco da Gama fowl was waking the echoes of Toad-Water with crescendo bursts of throat music which compelled attention to her griefs.”
Contents
The Music On The Hill / The Interlopers / The Cobweb / The Hounds Of Fate / The Phantom Luncheon / Shock Tactics / The Disappearance Of Crispin Umberleigh / Blood Feud of Toad Water / The Story Teller / The Unrest Cure / The Open Window / Gabriel Ernest / Esme / Fate