SOURCE: "Ever Greene," in New York Times Book Review, February 24, 1991, pp. 13-14.

In the following mixed review, Stern states that even though The Last Word does not reflect his best works of short fiction, Greene is nevertheless a masterful short story writer.

In the introduction to his massive 562-page Collected Stories, published in 1972, Graham Greene writes: "I remain in this field a novelist who has happened to write short stories, just as there are certain short story writers (Maupassant and Mr. V. S. Pritchett come to mind) who have happened to write novels."

About Maupassant and Mr. Pritchett, Mr. Greene may be right, but there is also a whole other subset of writers who are equally at home in the short story and the novel (Bernard Malamud and Flannery O'Connor come to mind). It is in this group, in spite of his demurrer, that I would place Graham...