The Darling and Other Stories - Anton Chekhov - ★★.½

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AUTHOR: Anton Chekhov
GENRE: Short Stories, Classics.
RATING: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A collection of ten stories by Anton Chekhov. Might work better for the right reader. To me, this was more of an experimental pick and ended up an average read.


I might have read a couple of Chekhov’s stories over the years in some or the other compilation, but I don't recollect any at present except 'Misery'. And I've never read any of his story collections. This seemed like a good time and book to begin exploring his writing.

It was not.

As this is a classic collection and many might know these stories, I’ll be brief. (Well, briefer than my usual reviews.)

➾ Ten stories, of which one is novella-length. I stopped reading the novella halfway as I was bored out of my head.

➾ This translation was first published in 1916. It seems like a good attempt, with the language being consistent across the set.

➾ Portrayal of women - Typical of the era and culture and male Russian authors. Sigh…

➾ Typical Russian writing tendency of calling one character by ten names! Longer sigh…

➾ Of the ten stories, I liked only one. The titular “The Darling” - From the ironic title to the vacuous yet endearing lead character to the intelligent juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy to the cryptic yet clear ending, this story reads even better between the lines than at surface level. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

➾ The stories are all in the public domain so you can download them from various sites. I read an EPUB downloaded from the globalgreyebooks site, which has an amazing collection of public domain works available for free downloads. I loved how well this free book was formatted, much better than some Project Gutenberg copies. I’ll check out some other classics from this site in future.

➾ Still interested in giving this a go? You can get a copy of this book here:

➾ Rounding down my rating wherever applicable as even the good stories were somewhat misogynistic in their depiction of women.

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