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maeclegg's review
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
ryster's review
4.0
A lovely collection of a few of Tolstoys short stories, although the translator made some decisions that I didn’t care for.
jasonfurman's review
5.0
I love taking the opportunity to read books/authors I like in new translations. And I love Pushkin Press, their choice of books, their excellent translators, and just the formatting/feel of their physical books. They are now doing an "Essential Stories" series including two excellent volumes I have already read, [a:Anton Chekhov|5031025|Anton Chekhov|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1317162641p2/5031025.jpg]'s [b:The Beauties: Essential Stories|36356809|The Beauties Essential Stories (Pushkin Collection)|Anton Chekhov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1507187513l/36356809._SX50_.jpg|14927568] and [a:Franz Kafka|5223|Franz Kafka|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1569196898p2/5223.jpg]'s [b:The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories|41807452|The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man Essential Stories|Franz Kafka|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1536682904l/41807452._SX50_.jpg|65231392]. Both of those collections really were the "essential stories" and a reasonable starting place for either author, ~200 pages so not overwhelming but a showcase of the range of the authors and, in the case of Kafka, most of his actual published short stories (obviously only a tiny fraction in the case of Chekhov).
Lives and Deaths is less Tolstoy's "essential stories," something that is impossible in a ~200 page book since so many of his greatest stories were really more like novella's or novelette's. Instead Boris Drayluk chose to focus on lives and especially deaths in Tolstoy's stories (but hardly a complete accounting of that theme, for example "Master and Man" would have fit well in this collection). And he chose two canonical stories ("The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Alyosha the Pot") and two I had never heard of before and I don't think are that commonly anthologized ("Pace-setter: The Story of a Horse" and "Three Deaths"). All were well translated and worth reading (a very minor note, I last read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" decades ago but still distinctly remember that when he moved into his dream house he still felt it had one too few "closets" in the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation, this translates that as "rooms" which I think is more accurate, although it is possible that "closet" actually meant "room" when the Maudes did their translation).
Some thoughts on each of them:
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich": One of the most powerful renderings of the life but mostly the slow and painful death of a man, seen at first from the distant perspective of the idle living and then from his own. Although it is not a story about marriage, it is a bit of a shame that his wife is presented so one dimensionally without Tolstoy's amazing ability to show such a wide variety of perspectives being extended to her.
"Pace-setter: The Story of a Horse": On the subject of Tolstoy's amazing ability to show such a wide variety of perspectives, in this story he does it for horses! It begins with an old gelding being chased around by other horses, it gets into the heads and thoughts of the different sides of this. Then the old gelding tells his story, it has some elements of fairy tale but more of psychological realism, at least insofar as you can ascribe something resembling human psychology to a horse, their perception of themselves, their fellow horses, and humans. An amazing feat of storytelling and empathy.
"Three Deaths": I didn't like this very much, just felt like people being sick, in pain and dying.
"Alyosha the Pot": I've read this a few times, even if you know what is going to happen it is hard not to have a tear in your eye by the end, but also hard not to be mad at Tolstoy for not appearing to idealize passivity and obedience in the face of injustice.
Lives and Deaths is less Tolstoy's "essential stories," something that is impossible in a ~200 page book since so many of his greatest stories were really more like novella's or novelette's. Instead Boris Drayluk chose to focus on lives and especially deaths in Tolstoy's stories (but hardly a complete accounting of that theme, for example "Master and Man" would have fit well in this collection). And he chose two canonical stories ("The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Alyosha the Pot") and two I had never heard of before and I don't think are that commonly anthologized ("Pace-setter: The Story of a Horse" and "Three Deaths"). All were well translated and worth reading (a very minor note, I last read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" decades ago but still distinctly remember that when he moved into his dream house he still felt it had one too few "closets" in the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation, this translates that as "rooms" which I think is more accurate, although it is possible that "closet" actually meant "room" when the Maudes did their translation).
Some thoughts on each of them:
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich": One of the most powerful renderings of the life but mostly the slow and painful death of a man, seen at first from the distant perspective of the idle living and then from his own. Although it is not a story about marriage, it is a bit of a shame that his wife is presented so one dimensionally without Tolstoy's amazing ability to show such a wide variety of perspectives being extended to her.
"Pace-setter: The Story of a Horse": On the subject of Tolstoy's amazing ability to show such a wide variety of perspectives, in this story he does it for horses! It begins with an old gelding being chased around by other horses, it gets into the heads and thoughts of the different sides of this. Then the old gelding tells his story, it has some elements of fairy tale but more of psychological realism, at least insofar as you can ascribe something resembling human psychology to a horse, their perception of themselves, their fellow horses, and humans. An amazing feat of storytelling and empathy.
"Three Deaths": I didn't like this very much, just felt like people being sick, in pain and dying.
"Alyosha the Pot": I've read this a few times, even if you know what is going to happen it is hard not to have a tear in your eye by the end, but also hard not to be mad at Tolstoy for not appearing to idealize passivity and obedience in the face of injustice.
dvaughan99's review
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bob625's review
4.0
In the four stories of Lives and Deaths, Tolstoy writes with an efficient, crystalline directness that should be recognisable to any reader as being purely human; the anxieties and hapless fears that each and every one of us feel are described in a effecting accuracy that feels pathologically, desperately personal, still fresh and compelling after over a century.
Here's a passage from The Death of Ivan Ilyich that stood out to me as beautiful, it's Ivan Ilyich's all-too-late realisation that he's lived a wasted life.
The marriage... So accidental... The disillusionment, the smell of his wife's breath, the sensuality, the pretence... And the soul-deadening work, the worries about money - a year of that, then two, ten, twenty - all the same. Only more deadening with each step... It's as if I had been trudging steadily downhill, all the while imagining that I was going uphill.
Pace-Setter: The Story of a Horse was probably my favourite of the collection; in it, a withered pie-bald colt tells us and his paddock mates the story of his dismal, tortured life. This was the first story I've read set from the point of view of a horse, and in a pleasantly odd manner it seemed to have the most feeling, it was the most depressingly real of the four. Pace-Setter is confounded at the vile power-hungry tendencies of man, whose inherent nature is to possess as much of anything as possible.
... I just couldn't comprehend what it meant to say that I was the personal property of a human. The words "my horse" in reference to me, a living horse, seemed as strange as the words "my land" "my air" or "my water".
Boris Dralyuk's new translations are for the most part fantastic; Tolstoy comes across with a simple immediacy that becomes almost hypnotic. Unfortunately, the spell breaks in a section or two, sentences seem to have been smushed together haphazardly in places which I couldn't help but feel could have been done better with a little more thought. I haven't read the originals, so maybe these parts are exacting translations of Tolstoy's original Russian prose, but anywho, here's an example that I thought read particularly badly.
Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying, and he was in constant despair. Deep down, Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying, but he not only failed to accustom himself to this fact, he simply did not and could not understand it.
Pushkin Press really knocked it out of the park with this little edition. The stories are newly collated and translated, and though they only display a tiny sliver of Tolstoy's short story library, I feel this selection does a terrific job of encasing his emotive precision and human understanding in an elegant, enticing nutshell.
Here's a passage from The Death of Ivan Ilyich that stood out to me as beautiful, it's Ivan Ilyich's all-too-late realisation that he's lived a wasted life.
The marriage... So accidental... The disillusionment, the smell of his wife's breath, the sensuality, the pretence... And the soul-deadening work, the worries about money - a year of that, then two, ten, twenty - all the same. Only more deadening with each step... It's as if I had been trudging steadily downhill, all the while imagining that I was going uphill.
Pace-Setter: The Story of a Horse was probably my favourite of the collection; in it, a withered pie-bald colt tells us and his paddock mates the story of his dismal, tortured life. This was the first story I've read set from the point of view of a horse, and in a pleasantly odd manner it seemed to have the most feeling, it was the most depressingly real of the four. Pace-Setter is confounded at the vile power-hungry tendencies of man, whose inherent nature is to possess as much of anything as possible.
... I just couldn't comprehend what it meant to say that I was the personal property of a human. The words "my horse" in reference to me, a living horse, seemed as strange as the words "my land" "my air" or "my water".
Boris Dralyuk's new translations are for the most part fantastic; Tolstoy comes across with a simple immediacy that becomes almost hypnotic. Unfortunately, the spell breaks in a section or two, sentences seem to have been smushed together haphazardly in places which I couldn't help but feel could have been done better with a little more thought. I haven't read the originals, so maybe these parts are exacting translations of Tolstoy's original Russian prose, but anywho, here's an example that I thought read particularly badly.
Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying, and he was in constant despair. Deep down, Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying, but he not only failed to accustom himself to this fact, he simply did not and could not understand it.
Pushkin Press really knocked it out of the park with this little edition. The stories are newly collated and translated, and though they only display a tiny sliver of Tolstoy's short story library, I feel this selection does a terrific job of encasing his emotive precision and human understanding in an elegant, enticing nutshell.
dhn045's review
dark
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
garabato's review
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Four stories, two of which are much longer than the others
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- Pace-setter
coolkidlily's review against another edition
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5