By Anton Chekhov
I read this on the 10th of March, 2025.
This is a Penguin Little Black Classic, containing three stories by Chekhov: The Kiss, The Two Volodyas, and the eponymous Gooseberries.
It is a truth universally accepted that when you pick up a book by a long-dead author whom everyone agrees is very good indeed, the book will, indeed, be very good, indeed.
Universal human emotions, precise, evocative, and lush internal landscapes, combined with sparse and efficient language. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said by better writers.
The Kiss is about an army officer who, being accidentally kissed in the dark at a party by someone expecting someone else, has his entire outlook and worldview changed. He spends months as a happier man, daydreaming, reminiscing, and imagining a future, but when he goes back to the same town, he doesn’t receive an invite from the original host, and it all comes crashing down.
The Two Volodyas is about a woman in an unhappy marriage, pining after someone else, who uses and abandons her.
Gooseberries is about a man who scrapes and saves his whole life to chase his dream of a country house with a burbling creek, a lovely kitchen, fields, and hedges of gooseberries; and he gets what he wants. It’s told via framing device, by a narrator who talks about what we really want in life: is it happiness, or purpose?