Like Chekhov, Berberova plies her scalpel against her characters’ souls. The insurance hustler in one story and the ambitious girl turned tramp in another, the plain woman who has never known love in a third: their author leaves them fully exposed. These stories are very much of their time, but the years haven’t tarnished them: the images remain bright, the descriptions swift, nothing is wasted. Their grimness is alleviated by a compassion untouched by sentimentality. What Berberova has accomplished is to create a poetry of loneliness-and it’s hers alone.
