Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Thursday, February 12, 2015

First Love by Ivan Turgenev (1860, translated by Constance Garnett)


First Love is Ivan Turgenev's most read novella.  A group of people are looking for ways to pass the time (now they would all be on devices) and agree to tell each other stories about their first loves. A man of advanced years agrees to go first and tells us of his love, at age 16, for the daughter of a neighbor. First Love is just an amazing work, the remembered experiences are marvelously rendered.  I would put it and his Faust and King Lear of the Steepes with the best of the works I have ever read, especially First Love.  Seemingly simple, it is a story of great emotional depth and complexity.  There is a scene in the story, readers will know it, that is overwhelming powerful.

Please share your experinces with Turgenev with us.  

Mel u


1 comment:

Suko said...

Thanks for the introduction to this book. Your second sentence is funny and so true! I wonder how our devices will change our futures.