Moral of the story: house renovation will lead to a screaming death.

That makes this novella sound both more and less interesting than it actually is. Ivan Ilych, a decent enough man entirely ordinary in his sins - the greatest is superficiality - gives himself a small injury while redecorating the new family home. It initially appears to be nothing, but the consequences of this little mishap are deadly, and poor old Ivan has a fairly unpleasant death given that even upper middle class people like himself are still bound by the limitations of the medical science of the time. He's in constant pain, the last three days of his life are pretty much agonised shrieking even with opium, but the bigger problem, for Ivan, is that he's dying at all. Yes, men are mortal, but that has always seemed to apply to other people, and his inevitable death, approaching as it is, must be faced somehow. (Ivan faces it with grumpiness and denial, mostly.) I think the end is meant to be uplifting, as he recognises his sins and has an extremely mild, almost religious acceptance of his end, but the conclusion strikes me as a little bit rushed, to be honest. It's still an enjoyable piece of writing, though, and more importantly for someone who has waded through Anna Karenina and is staring down the barrel of War and Peace, it is short.

I do love short.