Find today’s 4000 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/121.html Travis review Hmm. I wasn’t blown away by today’s story. An 80 year old shepherd and his grandson, Sanka, sit below the slumbering stars of the Milky Way as a herd of sheep sleep. Panteley, the overseer, comes up and listens to the old man’s tale of Yefim Zhmenya. …
Find today’s 5141 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/120.html Travis review: This may be one of Chekhov’s darkest stories. It drips with gloomy teenage male angst and ends with a bang. Volodya, “a plain, shy, sickly-looking lad of seventeen,” is uncomfortable in this world. He lives with his vain and superficial mother. The family’s fortune has been squandered by her …
Find today’s 2401 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/119.html Travis review: Readers get to spend a day with an irritable veteran of Polish descent complaining about the lazy Russians to his friend, a German architect. Lyashkevsky has a head injury so this story could be seen as a sad tale of mental illness. Yet the tone reminded me …
Find today’s story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/118.html An examining magistrate tells a true story about a woman, who in the prime of her health successfully predicts her own death. The structure unfolds like a mystery, as the majority of the story details the woman’s life starting from the point that she made her prediction: “Directly after my confinement. …
Find today’s 2479 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/117.html Travis review: In the past I’ve said that Chekhov often uses restraint when it comes to conflict, but into today’s story there are two murders. I’m not sure that the title “An Adventure” is the most appropriate. There are elements of adventure, however thriller or suspense might be better to …
Find today’s 4630 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/116.html Travis review: This story is told in three parts it seems. The first is the alcoholic and most-likely-to-be defrocked Father Anastasy refusing to leave his Reverence Fyodor Orlov’s office for an unknown (even to Anastasy) reason. The second is Deacon Liubimov telling Orlov about his son’s heathen lifestyle and …
Please find today’s 1974 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/115.html Travis review: Today’s tale comes off more like a fable than a story. It is easy to like Maxim as a character. He’s an optimistic, high-on-life kind of guy. Things seem to be going great for him, but in literature that’s usually a bad sign. Chekhov gives indications …
Find today’s 1593 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/114.html I like this story a lot, even if it isn’t a great one as it pushes lines of absurdity and questions faith. If anything can be said of actual Civil Councilor Navagin, it is that when he takes on a project, he commits to it wholeheartedly. The mystery of …
Find today’s 1965 word story here here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/113.html Travis review: This is a first person point of view/slice of life story told from an honest, good intentioned adolescent taking communion and giving confession. The tone seems innocent throughout with “nearly nine” year old boy trying to be a good Christian, even making amends with this his …
Find today’s 2555 word story. http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/112.html Travis review: Today’s story is a sad tale told from a young lieutenant’s personal point of view as he returns home. Sitting next to a pipe smoking “well-to-do Finn or Swede“, the lieutenant feels ill and his annoyance at the pipe smoker becomes an obsession as several paragraphs are dedicated to hate …