A review by msgtdameron
The Enchanted Wanderer: And Other Stories by Nikolai Leskov

4.0

Going camping with Leskov must have been great experience. Even though in his time travel meant camping, fast forward to today and one wishes he were writing and telling his tales. Leskov style is to tell the tale, we hear the tellers voice can even see the arm and hand gestures that he is using. This is called skaz or oral writing. Skaz comes from the Russian verb skazat to speak or tell and leads to the other noun skazka or folktale. Styleistically this is fine if the story is short but in the longer stories, Enchanted Wanderer, The Angel it leads to a to much extraneous information. Take the story The Robbery. The teller spends two pages discussing his aunts Old Believer thoughts from crossing one's self to why one should not marry a current Orthodox girl. All well and good but her major contribution to the story is to say that the tellers Uncle is at the gate. Leskov could have just left her religious description as She was an Old Believer. and the effect would have been the same. In The Angel there are also many pages of the rites of the Old Faith. Which while useful to the tale could have been cut with out effecting the tale at all. Maybe this is just a petty stylistic peeve I have but, It would have much better to hear these stories around a campfire in some wood. The ghosts and sprites would come to life, the cold of the Dnieper in winter would be felt more, the ghosts would be more real.. This book takes me back to those days at summer camp and walks down Old Harmony Rd, riding in the woods, camping at barn two, and all the other events that young folks my age experienced in the 70's during the summer. The stories are fantastic just read them and then retell them around a campfire at some point in the future. Your audience will love you the more for it.