Edited by Philip Hensher
My previous reviews of older or classic fictions: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/reviews-of-older-books/
My review of the Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/12/26/the-penguin-book-of-the-contemporary-british-short-story/
When I read the stories in the above two books, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below:
I first reviewed in 2021 the next story due to be read, as follows…..
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nullimmortalis
…and so on to the next story that describes the context of these words: “…widows, as exemplifying the survival of the matrimonially fittest,…”
THE SPHINX WITHOUT A SECRET by Oscar Wilde
This famous brief prose fiction about a literal conservative man bewitched by the amorphously, arguably un-literal secrecy in the mystery of a woman whom he fatefully glimpses. Yet, I see her haunting mystery, “looking like a moonbeam in grey lace”, as a straightforwardly LITERAL means to trap a man into the web of her desires. Until she, in this story told by the man, reliable or not, succumbs to a sudden congestion of the lungs, implying that the power of our human bodies to rule over or submit to matters of life is far more unilaterally mysterious than anything hard-and-fast or reconditely malleable that one does or believe or even simply is. There lies fate.
nullimmortalis
The story, thus, IS its own title.
The full context of the above: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/the-4th-fontana-book-of-great-ghost-stories-edited-by-robert-aickman/
EVELYN WAUGH: Cruise Letters from a Young Lady of Leisure
”Post-card
This is the Sphinx. Goodness how Sad.“
Goodness how Good.
It may have already have noticed that you are reading these two Penguin books alternately, and it seems to be the most synergous or synchronous path through them, so far.
Goodness, not you Me.