Find today’s 2466 word story at http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/071.html Travis review: Today’s story has the setup of a crime novel and could have started off with Edward Bulwer-Lytton‘s famous line: “On a dark and stormy night.” Incidents of crime are cataloged by the forester and coward, Artyom. Perhaps he is not exaggerating when he claims to have been beaten …
Find today’s 2800 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/070.html Travis Review: The schoolmaster is at the end of his life, and it seems that everybody knows it but him. To Fyodor Sysoev’s credit, he is so caught up with minor slights of his students during their examinations and making his fourteenth annual dinner, that he only thinks of …
Find today’s 2180 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/069.html Travis Review: It is interesting that this story is told in the past tense when Pasha “was younger and better-looking, and when her voice was stronger.” It seems like that line is a set up for things to go horribly wrong for the chorus girl, which they do. Confronted …
Today’s story is 2319 words long and can be found here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/068.html Travis Review: This story could be called “How I Started Drinking” or “They Drove Me To Vodka.” Zaikin starts off the story by leaving the train station to his summer villa in a foul mood and he is not the only one as “a crowd …
Find today 2050 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/067.html Travis Review: The chemist’s wife in today’s story feels like a familiar Chekhov character. She is miserable, but can’t pinpoint the reason. “She felt bored, depressed, vexed . . . so vexed that she felt quite inclined to cry — again she did not know why.” In the …
Find today’s 2281 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/066.html Travis Review: In today’s story, a man tells us of the three instances in his life that freaked him out. The first experience is visual. He gets the heebee-jeebies when seeing a twinkling light “like that of a smoldering lamp, at one moment dying down, at another flickering up” …
Today’s story is 1819 words and can be found here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/065.html Travis Review: Today’s story reminds me of Chekhov’s early writings between 1882-85 when many of the stories ended with a punch line. In this case, a love letter from a secret admirer is sent to Pavel Ivanitch. The man with “eight years of married …
Find today’s 2387 word story here. http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/064.html Travis Review: Today’s story could be read to young children before bedtime or in an elementary school class. It contains many classic elements of children’s literature including a quasi-dramatic rescue, a wise elderly/grandfatherly character with a kind heart, an orphan girl and boy dynamic (friendship, loyalty, physical warmth), …
Today’s story is relatively long at 6971 words: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/063.html Travis Review: Today’s story is told from a man looking back at his childhood when an uncle came to visit his family for a summer. His uncle is no ordinary man, but a privy councillor with a general rank, putting him in the top class of Russian …
Find today’s 1845 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/062.html Travis Review Today’s story made me smile. Like yesterday’s “A Gentleman Friend,” we are watching a foolish, fun-loving person. But unlike the calculative and shallow Vanda, I like Ivan Alexyevitch, as his mistake seems honest and he has several friends (gentlemen, I assume) who willingly stand up for the man. Chekhov …