One of my pandemic silver linings has been re-establishing a regular reading habit. I plan on recapping my reading in these short overviews, with quick summary information and quotes for anyone looking for their next book.

Published: Late 19th Century

Read: January 2021

One-Line Summary: “In such masterpieces as “A Doctor’s Visit”, “Ionitch”, and the title story, “The Lady with the Dog”, Chekhov explores universal themes of ambition and failure, love and loss, and the thin line that divides triumph and despair.”

Genre: Short Story

Rating: 6/10

Opening Sentence: “It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog.” (‘The Lady with the Dog’)

Who Should Read This?

• Fiction writers
• Amazon Prime members

Notable Quotables

• “There is in Petersburg a species of men whose specialty it is to jeer at every aspect of life; they cannot even pass by a starving man or a suicide without saying something vulgar. But Orlov and his friends did not jeer or make jokes, they talked ironically. They used to say that there was no God, and personality was completely lost at death; the immortals only existed in the French Academy. Real good did not and could not possibly exist, as its existence was conditional upon human perfection, which was a logical absurdity. Russia was a country as poor and dull as Persia. The intellectual class was hopeless; in Pekarsky’s opinion the overwhelming majority in it were incompetent persons, good for nothing. The people were drunken, lazy, thievish, and degenerate. We had no science, our literature was uncouth, our commerce rested on swindling—“No selling without cheating.” And everything was in that style, and everything was a subject for laughter.” (‘An Anonymous Story’)
• “You and I have both fallen, and neither of us will ever rise up again; and even if my letter were eloquent, terrible, and passionate, it would still seem like beating on the lid of a coffin: however one knocks upon it, one will not wake up the dead!” (‘An Anonymous Story’)