A review by rosekk
Short Stories by Ralph E. Matlaw, Anton Chekhov

3.0

The quality of the writing is really good. The stories were sort of hyper-real, aiming so closely at realism they felt a bit dream-like. A lot of the characters (the men more than the women or children) were really clear, distinct characters; it was easy to understand what they were like in a few pages. A few of the stories struck me as really brilliant (Ward 6, for instance), but others I struggled to feel passionate about in spite of the skill they were written with. Perhaps that's just me & my taste, rather than a failure in the stories themselves. These very melancholic, slightly cold stories which make you feel like you're looking at the world from underwater aren't really my thing.