Guy de Maupassant wrote nearly two hundred short stories in his brief career, and this volume gathers some of his most devastating. The collection opens with "Boule de Suif," the masterpiece that made his reputation: a courtesan's act of kindness during the Franco-Prussian War exposes the petty cruelty and hypocrisy of the respectable passengers who depend on her then cast her aside. But the range here stretches far beyond that famous tale. There is dark comedy in "The Farmer's Wife" and "A Normandy Joke," where peasant cunning and spousal rivalry become absurd theater. There is wartime absurdity in "Walter Schnaff's Adventure," where a fleeing soldier's cowardice is treated with more honesty than heroism. There is tragedy in "The Son," and something like grace in "Lasting Love." What unites these stories is Maupassant's surgical eye for what people hide: their vanities, their cowardices, their sudden cruelties. He writes prose so clean it seems effortless, but every sentence cuts. This is the French short story at its finest: precise, unsentimental, and unflinching.
