The Croquet Player (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

by H.G. Wells

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

This is an interesting work from an author whom readers most closely associate with science fiction. Most reviews and summaries describe the novella as a “ghost story,” although there is no ghost, only an ambiguous fear of impending war and the cruelty of which humankind is capable. Wells does a surprisingly good job in writing a story about essentially nothing. There is no direct action, only the men telling their stories to the croquet player as they sit on the terrace, and the precise nature of the fear they are describing is evident only near the end of the tale. In some ways, the fear is more convincing when it is amorphous and men are seeking to describe it as a ghost of cavemen or of Cain. Once they begin talking about reading the newspapers and their visions of air raids and uniformed men marching in columns, the book begins to have too much of a political or social message for it to truly be “haunting.” Nonetheless, there is some interesting commentary about human nature to be found in The Croquet Player, and at roughly 100 pages it is worth the short time to read for anyone who likes Well’s work.