Customer Reviews:
 Truly, Classic, French (oh so!) July 9, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
A magnificent collection indeed. Guy de Maupassant is the best storyteller of the 19th century France... This particular edition has the most entertaining short stories, each capable of delivering as strong a message on moral and profoundly non-societal ethics, as remarkably to-the-point images of an average French bourgeois or an average French peasant. The heroes are complex, decorated with their subjective and objectified environments: they fall in and out of love, abandon and adopt children...unpunished thieves, unfaithful servants, families enatngled in inheritance dispairs... His pen is so powerful that story after story lives succumb in theatrical precision so benign and materialistic, yet lively and at times, even lovable.
Being one of the best literary classics and appreciated in his lifetime and eternally after, Guy de Maupassant seemingly detested the societal formalities. He remained a shrewd observer althrough his journey from one story to the other and led a comparably humble life. Known for finding the Eiffel tower a most abhorrent addition to Paris, he analogically led an observer's life from a decent enough pedestal. Albeit his expressed dislike of the Tower, he'd nevertheless go there every day for his morning coffee for "it's the only place whence I cannot see it". True to his natural longing for an absolute fairness, he wrote of lives merely looking at them and never living one himself.
For all the above reasons, by all means, definitely get a copy of this book and enjoy the read through laughs and tears.
exellent May 11, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
almost as good as chekhov with his short stories.
got into short stories through chekhov,
short stories were not really my thing, as i prefer novels, but im changing my views.
they dont get much better than this.
full of insight into the human condition and easy to read as well.
Strangely beautiful March 18, 2006
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
Guy de Maupassant's strangely beautiful stories vary from uplifting explorations of moralistic living, through humorous parodies of the middle classes of 19th century France and their foolish attempts to better themselves, right through to the most critical revelations of the baseness of human existance, often revealed in the self-same stories. They are at once depressing and uplifting, cynical and idealistic, humorous and thought-provoking. The one thing that each story has in common is that it leaves the reader with a new insight into the human condition.This collection contains: Boule de Suif
Two Friends
Madame Tellier's Establishment
Madamoiselle Fifi
Clair de Lune
Miss Harriet
The Necklace
Madamoiselle Pearl
The Piece of String
Madame Husson's 'Rosier'
That Pig of a Morin
Useless Beauty
The Olive Orchard
A Sale
Love
Two Little Soldiers
Happiness
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