Two by Two
The nearest companion — four long stories on marriage, and gathered into the same omnibus.
Read our take
Pretty Tales for Tired People
Three long stories about clever people who cannot see the thing standing in front of them. The title is a joke, and this was her last collection.
- 1965
- 221
About Martha Gellhorn
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeGellhorn's 1965 collection gathers three long stories about people whose intelligence fails to protect them from what they want. The title is a joke at the reader's expense: these are not pretty tales, and the tiredness is the sort that comes from watching capable adults ruin themselves in slow motion. It is the last of her three story collections and the most astringent.
The story, in more detail
Three long stories: A Promising Career, The Clever One, and The Fall and Rise of Mrs Hapgood. Marriage and sexual politics are the subject of all three, handled with less patience than in Two by Two seven years earlier.
Gellhorn was fifty-six, between The Face of War and the Vietnam reporting. The register is the one she used for people she had decided not to protect: characters who are clever in company and cannot see the thing standing in front of them. She never said in so many words that the title was ironic, and the stories make it difficult to read any other way. All three were collected into The Short Novels of Martha Gellhorn in 1991, which is how most readers now reach them.
Why we recommend it
Her sharpest fiction
The war reporting is where the compassion lives. The stories are where the eye is coldest, and this collection is the coldest of the three.
Written at the height of the career
1965, between The Face of War and the Vietnam reporting, by a writer with nothing left to prove.
Three, not a dozen
Long stories with room to move, closer to short novels than to anything you would call a sketch.
What this book explores
Timeline
1965
Simon & Schuster publishes the three long stories, with a UK edition from Michael Joseph the same year — Gellhorn fifty-six, between The Face of War and the Vietnam reporting.
1991
All three are gathered into The Short Novels of Martha Gellhorn, from Sinclair-Stevenson.
1994
The omnibus reaches America as The Novellas of Martha Gellhorn, from Vintage — how most readers now find the stories.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Simon & Schuster
- 1965
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Michael Joseph
- 1965
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Sinclair-Stevenson
- 1991
- Paperback
- Vintage
- 1994
- 9780679743699
Reader reviews
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Pretty Tales for Tired People: frequently asked questions
Who wrote Pretty Tales for Tired People?
Martha Gellhorn. The collection was published in 1965.
What is Pretty Tales for Tired People?
Three long stories — A Promising Career, The Clever One, and The Fall and Rise of Mrs Hapgood — about people whose intelligence fails to protect them from what they want.
Is the title sincere?
No — it is a joke at the reader's expense. These are not pretty tales, and the tiredness is the kind that comes from watching capable adults ruin their lives.
What are its subjects?
Marriage and sexual politics, among people who ought to know better.
What kind of book is it?
A collection of three long stories — the novella length Gellhorn favored throughout her fiction.