A book on writing, focusing on the short story form, doesn’t at first sound like that interesting of a topic. Writing short story fiction is hard – I know that – but I do enjoy reading short stories. Some of the collections of short stories that I read contain ones that seem to leave me wondering – was that the end? What was the point? Am I just too dim to get it?
This book analyzes seven short stories by famous Russian authors, and without being overly technical shows you why these are great works, specifically what the authors did to achieve that greatness, and what steps you can take to dig into the layers of what is going on below the surface of the story.
This was written in 2020 – fairly recently – while the short stories were from a long time ago – the 1700’s and 1800’s. Furthermore we read these short stories translated from their native Russian, so it is sometimes difficult to get the cultural points and understand the political background at the time.
George Saunders is a teacher (as well as a writer) of literature, and here we can feel what it is like to be in his course. He takes an open approach and most of all encourages his students (and in this case, his readers) to think more deeply about these stories and consider what they might mean.
I really liked this book, and although some of the Russian short stories weren’t to my taste necessarily, I’m sure I’ll be a better reader in the future thanks to what I picked up here.
Next I am reading Endless Forms by Seirian Sumner.
