A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

When I was a freshman in college, I took a course on Russian short stories. (Technically called “Short Fiction: Russia & The West,” though it was taught by a Russian professor so it was mainly Russian short fiction.) There were only eight of us in the class; I kissed one of my classmates one night and it got awkward real fast. All of this is to say I don’t remember too much from the course besides “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka (not Russian) and “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol (Russian) and I am pretty sure we also read Dubliners by James Joyce (not Russian, famously Irish, seriously it’s right in the title of the book). Anyway, George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain serves as my second round of Russian short story education, nearly a decade later. And it’s marvelous. The book is half analysis of short stories, half instruction on how to write short stories, and another half Saunders reflecting on writing, reading, and Russian authors. (Yes that’s three halves, I studied history, not math, I don’t care.) There are six stories, printed alongside Saunders’s analyzation, by four different authors: Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekov, Ivan Turgenev, and Nikolai Gogol.

“It may be possible that, when all is said and done, that’s what we’re really looking for — in a sentence, in a story, in a book: joy (overflow, ecstasy, intensity),” Saunders writes. “An acknowledgement, in the prose, that all of this is too big to be spoken of, but also that death begins the moment we give up on trying to speak of it.” If you’re someone who loves reading, and the joy of reading, this is absolutely the book for you.

Rating: ★★★★★