Look! Another book!
I thought all Russian literature prior to the twentieth century was like Anna Karenina. Was I wrong! I've recently read The Captain's Daughter, by Alexandr Pushkin, which had been on my tbr list for ever, since I had been putting it off for a long holiday. As I thought it was going to be hard but rewarding. And it was exactly the opposite, I actually finished it in less than 24 hours, and I've already forgotten half of it. There's not much I can say about it, really.
It takes place during the Cossack insurrection during the reign of the Empress Catherine the Great. A young man is sent by his father to military service to a distant province (Orenburg) and we are to follow his adventures for a brief two hundred pages. In the way to Orenburg, he saves a man from freezing during a blizzard by giving him his coat. Obviously, this seemingly unimportant man turns out to be Pugachev, the leader of the insurrection, and this good deed results in a lot of unexpected good luck for our young officer, as his life is later spared by the Cossacks. There is also a blooming love (hence the name of the novel), much loyalty and bravery on his part and mean enemies galore.
There are lots of conflicts and every one of them is resolved by a very simplistic deus ex machina turn of the story. The only good thing about The Captain's Daughter is that it is really fast paced and fairly entartaining for a boring afternoon. In short, nothing remarkable.
It takes place during the Cossack insurrection during the reign of the Empress Catherine the Great. A young man is sent by his father to military service to a distant province (Orenburg) and we are to follow his adventures for a brief two hundred pages. In the way to Orenburg, he saves a man from freezing during a blizzard by giving him his coat. Obviously, this seemingly unimportant man turns out to be Pugachev, the leader of the insurrection, and this good deed results in a lot of unexpected good luck for our young officer, as his life is later spared by the Cossacks. There is also a blooming love (hence the name of the novel), much loyalty and bravery on his part and mean enemies galore.
There are lots of conflicts and every one of them is resolved by a very simplistic deus ex machina turn of the story. The only good thing about The Captain's Daughter is that it is really fast paced and fairly entartaining for a boring afternoon. In short, nothing remarkable.