May Fair by Michael Arlen (1925)

Arlen has a reputation for being rather throwaway which is a little undeserved. The standout thus far in my reading of him has been his 1923 collection These Charming People, to which this volume stands as a sequel. The wit and splendid lucid vividness of those stories is not quite so unstintingly evident in this one, though there are many lovely moments. There are a few which fall a little flat in the end, but, my, the journey! His style was the epitome by which the 20s in Britain understood itself in its most elegant and socially supercharged element. Dapper, dry, cosmopolitan, connected, cynical, amusing, top-hatted and slightly dangerous.....all produced by a Bulgarian of Armenian descent! These stories range from society comedy to eerie ghoulishness with the outward appearance of enormous ease, but somehow readable in them is the struggle he had in the writing - one develops phenomenally and then dissipates in "it was all made up"; one is a wonderful building-up of levels of horror and then it all turns out to be a film scenario; another cruxes on hackneyed imposture in a case of twins - the uphill push is also occasionally evident literally, where he writes openly about the need for a resolution, almost as though he were casting about for a plot and talking to the reader to cover the hiatus. But many of the other stories here are glowing with the fabulous opulence and wry-eyed wit for which Arlen is so justifiably known. I certainly don't feel minded to throw those qualities away.