The kind of beautiful and simple prose that doesn't just sit in your head but swirls around in your chest, chokes you up with emotion. Highly recommended if you're as big a fan of the Russians as I.more I hung on to every word of these stories and found myself reading carefully and meticulously so as not to miss anything and to take it all in. There's never unnecessary description everything he has to say is important, or he wouldn't say it at all. It's as if he wants to use only the perfect and exact words. Chekhov is very conservative in his writing. While the first two stories were definitely my favorites, I really did love the collection as a whole. It's been far too long since I picked up something Russian, and I thought this little volume would be a perfect introduction to Anton Chekhov, one of the greats.
#A visit to friends chekhov series
This is one book in a series of 20 Penguin has classified as its Great Loves series.
Not perhaps a wholly original play, but one that powerfully reminds us that Chekhov’s stories contain the seeds of all his dramas.Girl's first Chekhov. And there is a clutch of fine performances from Alan Cox as the alcoholic Sergei, Natasha Little as his despairing wife and William Postlethwaite as the well-born Misail who has a Tolstoyan urge to identify with the workers. Tamsin Greig, as the middle-aged doctor clearly besotted by him, subtly evokes the quiet anguish of the unfulfilled heart. Iain Glen (left, with Eve Ponsonby) is remarkable as Kolia, suggesting a man who – possibly like Chekhov himself – combines effortless charm and emotional ruthlessness. Nina Raine’s production gains immeasurably from luxury casting. But although it is tempting to see the play as a Chekhovian medley, what finally matters is its humane stress on the need for endurance. Unrequited love, marital misalliances and auctioned estates usher us into the world of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard. Watching Boyd’s ingenious mix-and-match, it is impossible not to be reminded of Chekhov’s future masterpieces. Kolia’s tragedy is that he is terrified of commitment Misail’s is that he has made a commitment and now regrets it. What links the stories, which take place in and around a dilapidated summer house, is the shared sense of futility and waste. In the other narrative strand we see Misail, an architect’s son who wants to be a roof-painter, trapped into marriage with the daughter of a wealthy vulgarian. In one, a charismatic Moscow lawyer, Kolia, returns to the provinces to try to rescue Sergei, a heavily indebted drunk whose estate is mortgaged to the hilt. But it works because it deals with eternal Russian themes – and because it is performed with rare musical precision.īoyd’s chosen stories neatly intersect. But it works because it deals with eternal Russian themes – and because it is performed with rare musical precision.omething of a hybrid: neither pure Boyd nor pure Chekhov. The result is inevitably something of a hybrid: neither pure Boyd nor pure Chekhov. William Boyd has fused two Chekhov stories from the 1890s, A Visit to Friends and My Life, to create a new play.