Find today’s 2585 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/178.html

Travis review:

This is a relatively straight forward story about a doctor, worn out with consumption and worry, who believes his wife is cheating on him and finds evidence of it written in English. The best part of the story is when the wife appears and later when the doctor, heart heavy laden, looks at photograph of him with his soon to be ex-wife, her family and himself. It features some Chekhov’s longest sentences that reminded me of Faulkner. Here is the last sentence of that paragraph:

And Nikolay Yevgrafitch himself in the photograph looked such a guileless soul, such a kindly, good fellow, so open and simple-hearted; his whole face was relaxed in the naïve, good-natured smile of a divinity student, and he had had the simplicity to believe that that company of beasts of prey into which destiny had chanced to thrust him would give him romance and happiness and all he had dreamed of when as a student he used to sing the song “Youth is wasted, life is nought, when the heart is cold and loveless.”

I love it as the writing made an average adultery story better.

Rating: 6