SOURCE: "Greene Thoughts in a Greene Shade," in New York Times Book Review, April 30, 1967, p. 5.

In the following mixed review of May We Borrow Your Husband? Allen states that the stories vary in quality but show "the author at play."

There is an element in writing that critics (by and large, a more serious-minded race of men than the creators whose works they discuss) give altogether too little attention. This can best be called the element of play, the writer's delight in his own cleverness and virtuosity, his ability to make bricks without straw and to do so simply for the fun it provides. It is a naive pleasure—and, for some writers, perhaps a fundamental one.

On the face of it, it is not one readily associated with Graham Greene. The great theme of his fiction has been that of "Man's first disobedience, and the fruit of...