FROM HIS SECOND DRAWER
|
|
Chekhov's "The Shooting Party" (1884), his only long novel, is a work of his immaturity, following the early stories for weekly magazines that launched his writing career but were later derided by him as juvenile, and four years before his novella "The Steppe," rightly considered his entry into serious literature. It is a colorful, zippy detective story, yet surprisingly crude and squalid, more Dostoyevsky than Turgenev. The murderer's identity was easy to guess early on, and no plot twist surprised. Read it, just for pleasure, after you have taken the full measure of mature Chekhov in all his acuity and delicacy. The Penguin translation worked well, except for those relentless Britishisms we get so often from English translators. Russians do not call each other "chap" and their peasants don't speak Cockney with dropped h's.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada