Donald Rayfield
Travels with My Uncle Vanya
Reading Chekhov: Critical Journey
By Janet Malcolm
Granta Books 210pp £13.99 order from our bookshop
IF JANET MALCOLM has a pet cat and a pet ferret, I wouldn’t mind betting that the cat has been declawed and the ferret has lost its scent glands. Her reading of Chekhov (the man as much as the stories and plays) is affectionate, attentive and acutely intelligent, but she renders a Chekhov familiar to us hm V S Pritchett or Ravmond Carver – a gentle. understated. well-trained pus\y cat, treading elegantly through the world.
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