SOURCE: Crane, David. “Not a Very Jolly Lot.” Spectator 72, no. 2 (21 March 1998): 40.

In the following review of The Collected Short Novels, Crane argues that Theroux's short fiction, while highly competent, is formulaic and unrelentingly morose when viewed cumulatively.

Only the very best short-story writers measure up to the demands of a collected edition and these tales [The Collected Short Novels] might have best been left in their original volumes. Taken separately any one of them would suggest an author of real talent, and yet the effect of lumping them together is a disappointing sense that more is in fact less and the individual pieces are neither as good or original as one had remembered them.

This is all the more striking because here is a collection of stories that covers almost 30 years of Theroux's career, and ranges in setting from Puerto Rico to Mayfair, from the Deep South to...