‘Beauties’ is a short story by Chekhov that tells the tale of a young schoolboy travelling through the countryside with his grandfather on a sweltering summer day. The boy is uninterested in his dreary dustbowl surroundings until they arrive at the house of an old friend and the boy becomes transfixed by an astonishingly beautiful young woman. ‘Beauties’ is a perfect encapsulation of Chekhov’s critically acclaimed writing style as the plot is minimal but his lyrical prose evokes a sense of enchantment and awe. Vivid imagery portrays the stunning beauty of both the young woman and the setting that will stay with the reader for as long as it stays with the mesmerised schoolboy. This short story’s meditation on the lasting impression of beauty makes it a perfect read for fans of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and Samuel Beckett, whose readers will also enjoy Chekhov’s realist writing style.
A prolific writer of seven plays, a novel and hundreds of short stories, Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) is considered one of the best practitioners of the short story genre in literature. True to life and painfully morbid with his miserable and realistic depictions of Russian everyday life, Chekhov’s characters drift between humour, melancholy, artistic ambition, and death. Some of his best-known works include the plays 'Uncle Vanya', 'The Seagull', and 'The Cherry Orchard', where Chekhov dramatizes and portrays social and existential problems. His short stories unearth the mysterious beneath the ordinary situations, the failure and horror present in everyday life.