Reviews - Anton Chekhov: Selected Short Stories

115 reviews for:

Anton Chekhov: Selected Short Stories

An obvious five stars. Chekhov gets people. He gets us at our weakest and most human, he still gets us and he will always get us. These stories capture souls not just of Russian peasants and princes, but of human beings. Love.

dclark32's review against another edition

4.0

Not sure what I can really add to the body of opinion on Chekhov, but I will say that I loved this collection of stories. They are very well chosen, and many seem almost contemporary in their portrayals of mental illness and the subjugation of women. Loneliness is a recurring theme, and many of its characters are on the outside looking in. Many are trying to exert control over their lives, in one way or another. It's remarkable how fully detailed each of the characters are, really. Not every story is worthy of a full five stars - Chekhov's scene setting can be a trifle dull in the opening pages of a given story - but on the whole the collection is very well selected.

Favourites:

Easter Night
A Boring Story
Peasant Women
Ward No. 6
The Black Monk
The Man in a Case
The Lady with the Little Dog
The Fiancee

4.5/5

siren224's review against another edition

5.0

تشحوف ده عالم تااااااني بس كده

aaaleksic's review against another edition

4.75

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

This book I got so far back I don’t really remember where I got it from. Must have been when I was pursuing Barnes and Nobles on my off-time and picked it up after reading a bunch of Tolstoy's and Dostoevskys work. I’ve always been a fan of classic Russian literature and have never read Chekhov, so I figured I’d give it a chance.

He certainly does not disappoint. I should preface this by saying I’ve never touched some of Chekhov's other work, so I had no idea what to expect of his writing. The only thing I really had reference to was Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, so I figured it would be similar to that. In some ways it is, not sure if it’s just the way the Russian is translated to English or if they all have similar writing styles indicative of their era (maybe both), but it feels raw in a way that’s hard to describe. The characters in the short stories, no matter if it’s 30 pages long or only 5 pages, feel incredibly real and universal. I obviously wouldn’t know what it was like growing up in Russian during the Victorian era, but I know what it’s like playing card games with your friends as a kid, I know what it’s like to have an awkward conversation with someone you haven’t seen in awhile, people who seemed blinded by their misery and people who seemed blinded by their happiness. Working what feels like a mundane and dead end job until everything changes. Hearing rumors of affairs and love stories from strangers. Obviously there are cultural differences I’ll never relate to, but the core of it never left us. The experience, that vital human aspect. It’s something I’ve come to love about all the Russian literature I’ve read so far, and Chekhov seems particularly apt at it. I think it helps that most of the stories don’t end where you’d expect them to end. It always feels like you were dropped in the middle of a scene in the beginning and end just as you’re starting to make sense of things. I don’t think it’s necessarily the nature of it being a short story either, since plenty of short stories have a definite beginning and ending. In Chekhov's works, however, they just flow. Somehow that’s more beautiful to me. Life doesn’t have a set beginning or ending. It doesn’t always start with birth and end in death, there’s always more to the story, always more to the individual than meets the eye. I almost teared up at the story of the simple cabman whose son just died, but has no one to talk to about it. Throughout the story he tries to confide in someone but no one wants to listen to this old man’s troubles. So he turns to his horse, telling her all about his son and how he should’ve died in his place. You only get a couple pages with this man but already your heart aches for him. Why doesn’t anyone talk to him? Would I do the same as the other people he encounters and turn him away? Does he ever find solace in anyone other than his horse?

Another thing I’ve always admired about Russian literature (at least from this era) was the emphasis on love. Not as a large romantic gesture, but as a higher concept. Something that exists within everyone and everything, a love for a friend, mother, father, son, daughter. Love for the city, for the countryside, for life itself. It’s such a refreshingly humanistic way of looking at the world, given how much of it feels drenched in irony and cynicism nowadays. If anything these stories seem to reject that perspective, portraying the logical cynicist as cowardly and miserable most of the time, but even he is given the benefit of the doubt. It’s all very well put together and I couldn’t be happier with the result. I will definitely have to take a chance on some of Chekhov's other works after this.