SOURCE: A review of Hungry Stones, in North American Review, Vol. 205, 1917, pp. 149–50.

In the following review, the commentator criticizes Tagore's skills as a short story writer.

There can be little doubt that as a poet Tagore appeals to the poetically minded in this country very nearly if not quite as strongly as he does to lovers of poetry in India. The question whether or not he really appeals to Americans as a story-teller is more difficult to answer; yet this is a question that the reader of Tagore's recently published volume of short stories, The Hungry Stones, is fairly compelled to consider. These stories are, if the word may be pardoned, more Tagoreish than any of the author's previous writings. Although they resemble the conventional short story more closely in form than Tagore's poetry resembles the ordinary poem, they differ more widely in spirit from the sort of...