Fandango and Other Stories

This is excellent literature. I was bit hesitant to tackle what I thought would be stories with complicated names and plots, but I was pleasantly surprised. Grin was an excellent writer. His prose flows very well and his talent shine through on every page. Really enjoyed this collection. 4.5 stars.

I really appreciate the advanced copy for review!!

I was already familiar with Grin's writing style and themes, and I enjoy reading his stories, yet this particular collection missed the mark for me.

I appreciate the work that Grin put into his writing; this is not trivial stuff - every sentence from Grin's hand could read like a poem. Wonderful stuff; I'm just not a fan of the plotting (or as I refer to it, plodding) - sometimes glacial, but never agonizingly so. I suppose his work is like being served a magnificent-looking eight course meal, with every plate looking more sumptuous than the rest, but the ordering, the wait, and the presentation take longer than the taste inevitably reveals itself to be. I cannot fault the author - it is his style, and it simply isn't for me.

Why four stars? I have read good and bad translations of every Russian author, Grin included. Translation and literary translation are not the same animal, and when you come across a noteworthy literary translator, it is always worth bring his or her name to the fore. Bryan Karetnyk did a superb job handling Grin's sometimes challenging writing as the translator of this collection. Easily worth an additional star to top the three-star performance of the Grin short stories.

Although I was delighted to discover another Russian author, these stories are just not for me. Alexander Grin (1880-1932) wrote 6 novels and many short stories, and is perhaps most famous for his iconic novel Scarlet Sails, a fairy tale that has been adapted into a film, an opera and a ballet. But he is little known in the west and now thanks to Columbia University Press this collection, expertly translated, is now available to an English-speaking readership. There are 8 stories here, mainly fantasies and all rather strange, it has to be admitted. Grin has sometimes been compared to Edgar Allan Poe, but for my money Poe’s stories are much more comprehensible. The stories collected here are from various stages of Grin’s career, but all have similar themes and atmosphere, even though the subject of each is very different. But they are just the sort of stories I don’t enjoy, too weird and hallucinatory, although as an avid reader of Russian literature I’m very happy to have tackled them.