Books
The Unbearable Saki: The Work of H. M. Munro
His own short story
Sandie ByrneOUP, 314pp, £19.99,
Charlotte Mitchell
This is an academic monograph on Saki’s literary work, which does not pretend to add much to the work of his biographers, but summarises and quotes lavishly from the evidence available about his short and rather secret life. It begins with the miserable childhood and the odious aunts and ends with his death aged 44 at the hands of a German sniper at Beaumont Hamel in 1916. Its ten chapters include four which focus mainly on the fiction, but the other chapters, which are mainly biographical and arranged more or less chronologically, also include copious references to his writings.
Like most of Saki’s fans, Professor Byrne is curious about his life, which is badly documented and enigmatic. His mother died when he was a baby, and his father was in the Burma police, so he was brought up by two unspeakable aunts in Devon. As a child he was regarded as delicate. He went to two different boarding-schools, and left rather early to spend a few years travelling with his sister and father in Switzerland and Germany, during which period he met and made friends with an elderly John Addington Symonds.
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Gid Tanner
November 28th, 2007 8:34pmYou have pointed this book's repeated "errors in proper names," yet your headline says "H.M. Munro" when it should be H.H.!
Peter Coady
February 6th, 2008 2:08pmSurviving letters from this period show an enthusiasm for the war .... which is also hard to reconcile with the gay, callous brutality of the short stories' I don't understand that comment - surely a gay, callous brutality is exactly what is needed to take part in a murderous world war?