He’s very much present as you read this.Īs I made my way through each successive story, I could feel my analytical skills sharpening. Maybe a little chalk dust on his sleeves. You can almost see him sitting on the edge of a desk in front of you teaching. It sounds like it could be dry but it isn’t at all because Saunders is conversational and witty and human. It’s a simple structure: each chapter begins with the Russian short story and is then followed by Saunders discussing what the author is doing and what that might make reader think. You don’t need to know anything about them before you start because the seven stories are included in the book. In A Swim in a Pond, you get to read not only George Saunders (author of Lincoln in the Bardo, one of my favourite recent books), but also Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, and Turgenev. That’s what reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is like. Imagine you could take a class with the author and have them teach you about writing.
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