Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike After spending their adulthood looking after their now-dead parents, neither has a job, and money is provided by their movie star sister Masha, who owns the house and pays the bills. Vanya (who is gay) and Sonia (who is forever reminding everyone that she was adopted) spend their days reflecting on their lost chances, debating whether the grove of nine cherry trees on their property constitutes an orchard, and bemoaning their rather Chekhovian lot in life. The only other resident of the house is their cleaning woman Cassandra, who, like her namesake, is prone to making dire prophecies that no
The Orchard Keeper The Orchard Keeper The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by the American novelist Cormac McCarthy. It won the 1966 William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel. "The Orchard Keeper" is set during the inter-war period in the hamlet of Red Branch, a small, isolated community in Tennessee. Its story revolves around three characters: Uncle Arthur Ownby, an isolated Woodman, who lives beside a rotting apple orchard; John Wesley Rattner, a young mountain boy; and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger. The novel begins with Marion picking up a hitchhiker named Kenneth Rattner, who attacks Marion with a tire