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A review by roxanamalinachirila
The Captain's Daughter: Essential Stories by Alexander Pushkin
4.0
Pushkin's style is short and to the point; he's not a man to write a paragraph when a word would suffice. The translation is lovely and fluent, flowing off the page beautifully and making this volume a pleasure to read.
The book is pretty short, which might sound a bit unusual to those who have hauled 19th century fiction around for class or entertainment, and it contains three stories: "The Captain's Daughter" (a really short novel), "The Stationmaster" (a short story); and "The Queen of Spades" (another short story).
"The Captain's Daughter" is the light-hearted, adventurous tale of a young man (17 years old) sent by his father to serve in the army and become a man. His father uses his connections to get him sent far from civilization to ensure he wouldn't fall in with the wrong crowd, and sends along a faithful servant. The son is naive, honest and enthusiastic, while the servant is old and desperately trying to hold things together and ensure sanity. Neither of them is Right in their approach to life (as the story shows), but the novel doesn't have time to preach; the young man runs into a bad influence right off the bat, he helps a poor (and very shady) old man by giving him an expensive coat, falls in love with the beautiful and honest captain's daughter and participates bravely in a war.
It's all in good fun, although it has its brutal moments; and it relies heavily on coincidence, but in an exciting way. Probably a satire of late 18th and early 19th Russian society and military, it's still quite pleasant to read today. It rather reminded me of Voltaire's "Candide", in a few ways: short, light, humorous, biting, probably referencing things which were debated themes in their day, but which are interesting details now, and adventurous.
"The Stationmaster" is a very different sort of story: told from the perspective of a frequent traveler, it follows the sad tale of a stationmaster who lived happily with his beautiful and delightful daughter, until she ran away from home. A sadder tone, but a lovely story.
"The Queen of Spades" is something different yet again - I'd call it a gothic, myself. An old countess is said to possess a secret that could win anyone three hands at cards, but the secret comes with strings attached; a young man hears of this and becomes determined to find that secret at nearly any cost.
All in all, a lovely volume that I enjoyed much more than I was expecting to; the pages just flew by. Many thanks to the published and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The book is pretty short, which might sound a bit unusual to those who have hauled 19th century fiction around for class or entertainment, and it contains three stories: "The Captain's Daughter" (a really short novel), "The Stationmaster" (a short story); and "The Queen of Spades" (another short story).
"The Captain's Daughter" is the light-hearted, adventurous tale of a young man (17 years old) sent by his father to serve in the army and become a man. His father uses his connections to get him sent far from civilization to ensure he wouldn't fall in with the wrong crowd, and sends along a faithful servant. The son is naive, honest and enthusiastic, while the servant is old and desperately trying to hold things together and ensure sanity. Neither of them is Right in their approach to life (as the story shows), but the novel doesn't have time to preach; the young man runs into a bad influence right off the bat, he helps a poor (and very shady) old man by giving him an expensive coat, falls in love with the beautiful and honest captain's daughter and participates bravely in a war.
It's all in good fun, although it has its brutal moments; and it relies heavily on coincidence, but in an exciting way. Probably a satire of late 18th and early 19th Russian society and military, it's still quite pleasant to read today. It rather reminded me of Voltaire's "Candide", in a few ways: short, light, humorous, biting, probably referencing things which were debated themes in their day, but which are interesting details now, and adventurous.
"The Stationmaster" is a very different sort of story: told from the perspective of a frequent traveler, it follows the sad tale of a stationmaster who lived happily with his beautiful and delightful daughter, until she ran away from home. A sadder tone, but a lovely story.
"The Queen of Spades" is something different yet again - I'd call it a gothic, myself. An old countess is said to possess a secret that could win anyone three hands at cards, but the secret comes with strings attached; a young man hears of this and becomes determined to find that secret at nearly any cost.
All in all, a lovely volume that I enjoyed much more than I was expecting to; the pages just flew by. Many thanks to the published and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.