The Darling and other stories [Tales of Tchehov vol. I]

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.

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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 show more 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:
https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/darling-and-other-stories-ebook.html

2.5 stars, rounding down as even the good stories were somewhat misogynistic in their depiction of women.

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This was the first of a series of 13 volumes of Chekhov's tales. Many of them seemed to address the rise of woman during that time and the difficulty men still had in his interactions with them but Chekhov also addresses frivolous men who spend every last rouble and of men who philander and leave their dying wives to suffer alone. His sense of characters range from the redeemable to the nearly absurd. There is the painter who only paints landscapes and thinks we should all should merely work a couple of hours a day and the woman who marries a much older man for his money and spends the next ten years miserable. There is the story which the novel starts out with, The Darling (followed by a criticism of this story by Tolstoy) in which a show more woman takes on the distinct passions of every man she marries as vehemently as if they were always her own and seeming to possess truly none of her own. Chekhov seems to hypothesizing about women and the future in a few of these and, though there is sometimes a sense of ridicule, one also gets the impression that he sees the value in women too.

In any case, the definitive delivery of these stories is a sense of the people living in Russia in the late 1800s and we see all walks of life from the successful business man's son to the artist. Most of the people are living above the poverty line but the backgrounds are still quite diverse to be interesting.

Those expecting stories reminiscent of a dark and dreary Dostoevsky will be surprised. Chekhov's tales vary from the slice of life variety to the profound but they often have a sense of wit and intellectual mirth that makes them brighter stories. One can imagine Chekhov smiling in real life whereas one can only picture Dostoevsky gnashing his teeth. The stories are also very easy to read and understand, with the only major difficulty still being so many similar names and very different sounding nicknames attached to full formal names which make it slightly more challenging at times to follow the characters.


It's difficult to top the introduction from Richard Ford and how he explains Chekhov's writing. Here's a couple of quotes I liked from that:

"Indeed, one regularly finds humor in Chekhov, often in surprising though never really mistakable moments. As in Shakespeare as in Falkner as in Flannery O'Connor, the comic turn not only counterweighs and intensifies a serious story's gravity, it also humanizes our own fated intimacy with what's grave by permitting life's fullest, most actual context to be brought into view, even as it points us toward an approved method of acceptance: laughter."

"The entirety of Chekhov's stories, in fact, often seem-but for their formal, sturdy existence in language-not even artful (although that would be wrong) but rather to be assiduous in mapping out degree by precious degree an accurate ground level constellation of ordinary existence-each story representing a subtly distinguished movement in a single sustained gesture of life confirmed."

"With Chekhov, we share the frankness of life's inalienable thereness; we share the conviction of how much we would profit if more of human sensation cold be elevated into clear, expressive language; we share a view that life (particularly life with others) is a surface beneath which we must strive to construct a convincing subtext in order that more can be clung to less desperately..." show less

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 show more 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:
https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/darling-and-other-stories-ebook.html

2.5 stars, rounding down as even the good stories were somewhat misogynistic in their depiction of women.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Connect with me through:
My Blog || The StoryGraph || Instagram || X/Twitter || Facebook || show less

To these wonderful stories I come back again and again. (IV-11)