Anton Chekhov wrote "The Lady with the Dog" in 1899, and it is possible — Raymond Carver thought it likely — that it is the finest short story ever written. This is not hyperbole designed to start an argument. It is a serious claim about what the story achieves and how it achieves it, and understanding it requires understanding what Chekhov changed about the form.
Before Chekhov, the short story was broadly understood to require a plot: a beginning, a complication, a resolution. Things had to happen, and the happening had to mean something clearly. Chekhov's great contribution was to demonstrate that a story could refuse all of this — could end in the middle of things, could leave its central problem entirely unresolved — and be more truthful for it.
What happens in the story
"The Lady with the Dog" follows Gurov, a Moscow banker with a wife he doesn't love and a history of affairs he regards with mild contempt. In Yalta on holiday, he begins an affair with Anna Sergeyevna, a young married woman. The affair ends when they both return to their lives. Gurov expects to forget her, as he has forgotten others. He does not forget her.
The story's second half takes place in winter in Moscow and in a provincial town where Anna lives. Gurov travels to see her. They arrange to meet when she visits Moscow. The story ends with them together in a hotel room, understanding that their situation is impossible and unresolvable, and that they are both, for the first time in their lives, genuinely in love.
"And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning."
— Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Dog (trans. Constance Garnett)Why it matters
The story ends there. There is no resolution — not because Chekhov couldn't provide one, but because life doesn't provide one. Gurov and Anna are in an impossible situation. It will not be resolved. They will continue, probably, in exactly the way they have been: stolen meetings, the weight of everything unspoken. Chekhov understood that this was a more accurate picture of how love and regret actually operate than any neat ending could be.
This is what Vladimir Nabokov identified as Chekhov's great gift: "The stories are told in a seemingly plain, conversational manner... In Chekhov, the dreadful thing is absent. Nothing dreadful occurs: it is all trifles, subtly graded trifles." The emotion in Chekhov accumulates in the gaps between stated things. What the characters don't say is as important as what they do.
How to read him
Chekhov rewards rereading more than almost any other writer. The first reading establishes the events; subsequent readings reveal what the events are doing. Everything that seems incidental — the description of a town, a gesture, a word choice — is load-bearing. Nothing in Chekhov is decoration.
Start with "The Lady with the Dog," "The Bishop," "Ward No. 6," and "Gooseberries." Then read the plays — The Cherry Orchard in particular — where the same techniques operate at longer length. Then go back to the stories and find that you have missed everything.
The Verdict
The finest short story writer in any language. Read "The Lady with the Dog" first. Read it slowly. Read it again.