A heartening confirmation of the matchless skill and humanity of one of the true masters.
A welcome gathering of the great storywriter’s atypical longer works, newly translated by the industrious pair who have previously offered fresh versions of Tolstoy, Gogol, and Dostoevsky.
Pevear’s incisive introduction notes the author’s recurring theme of “human insubstantiality” and makes the invaluable point that “The quality of Chekhov’s attention is akin to prayer.” These virtues appear in embryonic form in “The Steppe” (1888), about a nine-year-old boy who’s transported by carriage across Ukraine to boarding-school, educated (as it were) during his journey by encounters with characters who embody a broad spectrum of Russian life. It’s a plotless and episodic masterpiece, enlivened by acute observation, vivid sensory descriptions of climate and landscape, and a compassionate fascination with the variety and vagaries of human imperfection and possibility. Both 1891’s “The Duel” (a jaded egotist and a narrowly focused scientist lock horns and discover through their confrontation the follies of their preconceptions) and “The Story of an Unknown Man” (1892), a curious analysis of the changing psyche of a spy and potential assassin, are less fully achieved. But the emotional odyssey undertaken by Laptev, the hero of “Three Years” (1895), subtly links his romantic attraction to two very different women with the ordeal of his family and class, a mercantile society that fears an apocalyptic future and clings possessively to rapidly vanishing standards and ideals. Even better is “My Life” (1896), a thoughtful rebuke to Tolstoy’s self-righteous doctrine of redemption through physical labor and material sacrifice. But it’s more than this, since it includes a carefully measured dramatization of its well-meaning narrator’s break with his wealthy family’s insularity and pride, of his failed marriage to a woman unsympathetic to his (quite genuine) ideals, and of his paradoxical growth in wisdom and serenity. It’s one of Chekhov’s most openly autobiographical—and greatest—works.
A heartening confirmation of the matchless skill and humanity of one of the true masters.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4049-3
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Everyman’s Library
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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