Anton Chekhov - The Party and other Stories

Chekhov can leave you with the 'short-story sensation': the strange feeling of having been plunged into someone's life and then pulled out abruptly. You're uncertain how events might unfold next, but also aware that you've witnessed intimacy. This is strongest in 'An Unpleasant Business', in which a doctor hits his orderly and subsequently can't fire the man or sacrifice himself; and in 'A Nervous Breakdown', in which a law student obsesses over the problem of prostitution. Unlike Chekhov's early work, the stories in this collection are long ('My Life' is technically a novella), complex and melancholy. Some I found difficult.