The District Doctor

A Turgenev Short Story

By: Ivan Turgenev

Narrated by: Deaver Brown

"The District Doctor" is a wonderful Turgenev short story that appealed and influenced American authors, such as Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its writing style, and Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway for its focus on moments. As the Doctor says to a new acquaintance, "Sometimes you know people for a long time and never talk about anything that touches the soul; sometimes you start there on the first conversation." This is reminiscent of Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, in which people have moments of clarity when they act or don't act; here the Doctor explains such a moment in his life. The story starts quietly and ends with the Doctor being satisfied with winning a bit more than two rubles at the card game Preference. >"The District Doctor" is a wonderful Turgenev short story that appealed and influenced American authors, such as Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its writing style, and Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway for its focus on moments. As the Doctor says to a new acquaintance, "Sometimes you know people for a long time and never talk about anything that touches the soul; sometimes you start there on the first conversation." .

Public Domain (P)2011 Christina Brown

A Touching And Intimate Story...

in the Russian style. I love Turgenev (particularly his Fathers And Sons, which I highly recommend), and this story, like his others, penetrates to the center of hidden human feeling and emotion. (I almost never comment on narrators, but I have to say that this story had the misfortune of having the absolute WORST reader in the history of the audibly spoken word, and I am absolutely stunned that he could have ever gotten so much as past three words of an audition to do this job. This is a short story, so perhaps just find a printed copy and read it out loud to yourself--or pick someone at random on the street to read it to you. You can't do worse. Nonetheless, I rate the books and stories themselves, and so I am letting four stars stand as my overall rating for this fine short story.)

Simple Story Poorly Narrated

This is a very simple Turgenev short story which was completely predictable and with quite poor narration. Not worth the two bucks and thirty minutes.