We read this for my classics book club, mainly in order to give us two months to read Anna Karenina. (Who knows how many MORE russian stories with adultresses named Anna there are out there in addition to these two!)

My only prior experience with Chekhov was "Uncle Vanya," and this was very similar, both to that play and to Tolstoy. It was interesting to read about Chekhov in the intro - he was quite the self-made man. The story itself was ambiguous enough to be interesting, but I wished the female character had been more than a pasteboard cutout.