A Shocking Accident: Stories with a Sting in the Tail

This is a varied and entertaining collection of short stories, some long, some very short, which have in common a surprise conclusion, but otherwise differ considerably in subtlety and seriousness. They range from straightforward comedy (James Thurber’s ‘The Night the Bed Fell’ and Graham Greene’s ‘A Shocking Accident’) and mixed horrors (Roald Dahl’s ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, and Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’) to witty puzzles (Marina Mizzau’s ‘At the Airport’), straight realism (Jack London’s ‘To Build a Fire’) and the savage classic irony of Maupassant’s ‘The Necklace’. As some of these titles will suggest, there are stories here that have become routine anthology choices; no self-respecting anthologist should yet again be recycling Saki’s ‘Sredni Vashtar’. Recent work is poorly represented; only two of the fourteen stories are by living writers. But there are just enough unusual stories here, together with the skilful mix of genre, length and level, to make this a useful addition to school resources.