Reviews - A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

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A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

George Saunders is too modest here; he is the one giving a master class on writing, and it is masterful. It's been a long time since I read the great Russian writers--Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev--and again, they are truly great. (Though he left out my own favorite, Dostoevsky.) Saunders's approach is to reproduce the stories and then walk us through them, deconstructing how the authors created the effects that they did through plot, word choice, repetition of motif, etc. It also contains some relevant biographical information about each author and discussion of translation and Russian language. But perhaps the most important thing, the most telling detail, is that I finished the book wanting to try my hand at writing again myself. Very grateful for this book and recommend it to all.

charlesjlong's review against another edition

5.0

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

dark_sun_12's review against another edition

5.0

I hated reading growing up as a kid. Bad experiences, bored, and wasted time reading words proves useless. Now I read a book on how to read and other things. I found Saunders book to be for the every person and uses old style Russian writer as a medium on different thinking and different telling. Each of the short story were a delight (I’m bias towards Russian writers) and the explanation reveals how one can go deeper in the analysis of what an author is attempting to do. This might spoil the fun but I disagree. Stories are encoded and if one rereads then questions and speculation will arise as to why write a story rather than write a philosophy or self help book at least in this era. Stories came first, why, I don’t know. It works and people don’t question what works until they have to. But this book was not cynicism but compassion, tenderness, joy of the reading of sentences, pages, and events to hopefully “alter” one’s outlook on life. Only briefly.

alicefred's review against another edition

5.0

Book on reading and writing and Russian short stories. I listened to it and loved it. George Saunders reads, as does so many good actors reading the story. GS writes so lovingly about writing and making art and explains his process. I loved everything about it.

juliette_reads_a_lot's review against another edition

2.5

While Saunders' commentaries about the seven Russian short stories he selected for this book were insightful, I found them at times tedious and repetitive.
The great thing is that it enticed me to start a collection of short stories by Tchekhov ;)

fantasticraccoon's review against another edition

5.0

informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

joeobie's review against another edition

5.0

informative reflective relaxing

claire_fuller_writer's review against another edition

4.0

What I loved most about this, is how Saunders' voice came through in the anecdotes, the analysis of the Russian stories, and his writing advice. I've seen and heard him talk a number of times (although not in real life), and his gentle manner and clear style is very evident. Most ideas for how to write a short story - as he says towards the end - were confirmations for me, rather than any startling new insights, but that was okay. What maybe lost it a star was that the weighting of story analysis v. how to apply that to our own writing was too heavy. There were a couple of stories that I found I just couldn't relate to my own writing at all - I'm looking at The Nose in particular - and so I found the subsequent discussion of these stories less interesting. I'll still read everything Saunders writes in the future though.