Saki: The Square Egg (1924)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 955

The second collection of Saki's writing published in the decade after his death is very short; it contains just five or six pieces. The majority are more journalism than storytelling, on subjects such as the way that the Western Front affected the behaviour of birds or on British politics. The pieces about the front - the one just mentioned and The Square Egg itself, about a con man preying on soldiers just behind the lines - are most memorable, but the collection is generally not as interesting as Saki's others. This is because the writing has dated more rapidly, as it requires knowledge of events now obscure, a fault shared with his other brief political satire, Alice in Westminster.

Saki: The Toys of Peace (1923)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number:936

The first of two collections of Saki stories published after his death in the First World War, stories originally printed beforehand, was given a bitter title, an indication of how remote the world chronicled by Monro seemed even ten years later. (The other, The Square Egg, contains stories written during the War.)

As far as the stories themselves are concerned, they are generally poorer in quality than those collected in Monro's lifetime. The edge is missing, particularly in the eerie supernatural themes which run through much of the fiction. On the other hand, there are some excellent stories here, and both the merciless dissection of the stupidities of society and the evocation of the savagery that children sometimes have is present.

Standout stories include Morleva, about a doll, and Shock Tactics, about a young man whose mother still reads his letters, severely cramping his social life.

Saki: Beasts and Superbeasts (1914)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 893

The best known collection of Monro's short stories is also a bit uneven. Most are fine, but one or two feel as though he were just going through the motions. The savagery of Sredni Vashtar is missing, but the best stories here (The Story-Teller and The Lumber Room) are also about child psychology and adult incomprehension of childhood. It is probably the attention-grabbing, Nietszchian title which has ensured the survival of this collection, though it would at least serve as a good introduction to Saki's writing.

Saki: When William Came (1914)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 867

In 1914, Monro felt that appeasement was the wrong way to deal with Germany; he wanted to sound a warning that if the British did not prepare for war, the consequence would be subjugation. This novel is the consequence, propaganda swiftly overtaken by events; he wanted to portray a Britain which had lost a war and been annexed by Germany to shock public opinion towards war preparation.

From the perspective of those who lived after that war when it cane, who know how horrific it was, to have tried to bring it about seems quite an immoral act - though of course Monro felt he was doing his duty. There are certainly parts of the novel which now seem obscene, in the light of later twentieth century events (one of the results of the German victory which is deplored is a massive influx of German Jews into British society). As the war virtually destroyed the gentlemanly way of life which is the essence of Saki's writing, it may well be the case that had Monro survived the war - he enlisted in 1914 and was killed in France in 1916 - he might have preferred the occupation he depicted. Indeed, from a late twentieth century perspective, one really striking thing about the novel is the naivéte of the "horrors" of the occupation comparted with, say, the treatment of the Poles by Nazi Germany.

Some of the predictions are interesting, given the aftermath of the war. One particularly ironic comment is the reasoning given by German newspapers campaigning for the annexation of a defeated Britain: "They pointed out that Britain, defeated and humiliated, but with enormous powers of recuperation, would be a dangerous and inevitable enemy for the Germany of tomorrow..." This is a pretty good description of the situation in postwar Germany which was so important in the rise of the Nazis to power.

Because of the purpose for which it is written, When William Came is the least amusing of Saki's fiction; it would certainly be forgotten today were it not for his other stories. It is in parts interesting, but perhaps it would be better if it had been forgotten.

Saki: The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 836

Saki's third collection of short stories continues the trend toward the macabre shown in Reginald in Russia and The Unbearable Bassington. Many of them feature a new hero, Clovis Sangrail, who is a similar disenchanted upper class youth to but has a more malicious streak than either Reginald or Comus.

There are a fair number of stories in the collection, however, which do not involve Clovis. These tend to be the more supernatural, including The Music on the Hill, which is a further development of the idea of Gabriel-Ernest from Reginald in Russia of the savage demigod in the English countryside. Bringing this theme into a more domestic setting is one of Saki's most famous and most memorable stories, Shredni Vashtar, with its depiction of the childhood imagination as chilling as The Lord of the Flies.

The Chronicles of Clovis and Beasts and Superbeasts are Saki's most consistently excellent collections. The stories here are marred in one or two places by the fact that witty remarks are repeated, but that it a minor blemish.

Charles Maude & Saki: The Watched Pot

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 818

In this "complete works" of Saki, there are three items listed as plays. Two of them are really only sketches, about five pages each, which would fit into the collections of short stories quite well. (There are a couple of short stories which are actually in play format already.) The Watched Pot is different, a collaboration of considerable length with Charles Maude.

In the play, the largely offstage character Hortensia Bavvel wields an absolute tyrrany not just over her household but over everyone with whom she comes into contact, trying to mould a resentful and ungrateful world to be the way she thinks it ought to be. When her son marries, however, her power will come to an end, and because of the damage she is unwittingly doing to the prospects of the Party at the next election, many people have turned into matchmakers. Trevor shows no preference for any of the young women to whom he is introduced, and exen exhibits a tendency to fall asleep whenever left alone with one.

According to the introductory note, Maude said that the basic dialogue was his responsibility, while Monro provided the wit; Maude's major problem was to keep the witty remarks sparse enough that they didn't swamp the whole story. The Watched Pot is very funny, and contains some memorable examples of Saki's humour; Maude's input ensures that it is not as stilted and undramatic as the short plays by Saki alone.

Saki: The Unbearable Bassington (1912)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 788

At the beginning of Monro's first novel, the reader assumes that what they are reading is going to be exactly like his Reginald stories, but on a larger scale. Comus Bassington is another of the upper class young men with a cynical outlook on life. The plot is basically that his mother keeps trying to arrange things for Comus - the opportunity for a job as a secretary, or an advantageous marriage, for the Bassington fmaily is not so well off as they appear - only for Comus to spoil things by selfishness or an unwillingness to be guided by another.

The first thing which makes The Unbearable Bassington different is that Comus is not the sardonic observer that Reginald is. There is plenty of dissection of the foolishness of high society, but Comus is not the dissector. He is not sufficiently interested in the world outside himself to comment on it.

What makes The Unbearable Bassington more than social satire is the quite extraordinary power of the ending, which is extremely effective. Saki is famous for his satire; he has a marvellous if sometimes nasty imagination; but here he shows a literary merit quite different from those normally associated with him. The Unbearable Bassington is one of the peaks of his writing.

Saki: Reginald in Russia (1910)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 776

Saki's second collection of short stories did not appear until six years after the first, and there are significant changes. Reginald was a monothematic collection of extremely short commentaries on the British upper class social scene centred around the ascerbic, effete young man Reginald. Here, he features in only one story, providing the title for the collection, and it is half hearted in comparison with the earlier Reginald stories.

One of the strands in Saki's story telling is to write about something unpleasant behind a facade of apparently normal British life, usually something on the very of the supernatural; Sredni Vashtar in Beasts and Superbeasts is the most famous example. They are from a genre which today includes writers such as Robert Holdstock, and many of them are quite disturbing to read. The earliest of them, Gabriel-Ernest appears in this collection, incongrous alongside the society satire.

Saki: Reginald (1904)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 759

Monro's first collection of short stories is itself extremely short; twenty or so in under forty pages in this edition. Most of them are not really stories, but little anecdotes, providing context for a witty remark from effete, advanced and cynical Reginald. These include what is probably Saki's most famous phrase: "She was a good cook, as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went."

The purpose of these vignettes is to satirise society. This is done as much through the character of Reginald as it is through what he says and does. He is a product of high society, and yet something of an outsider in that he does not take it seriously. Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward are the kind of figures that Reginald brings to mind; Wilde was clearly an influence on Saki, and Coward, who wrote the introduction to this collected edition of his work, was an admirer.