Rating: 
Summary: Best of the "superflous man" bunch
Review: 'Hero of Our Time' is comprised of four parts, which differ greatly in narrative and length. It is a great read. It's considered the work that solidified Lermontov's place as Pushkin's successor. It has been studied thoroughly from historical, literary and psycho-analytical perspectives. However, its incomplex style and arresting drama also appeal to the casual reader.Pechorin is a wonderfully sympathetic anti-hero. His vulnerability, which comes through in his utter reluctance to reveal his true character, contrasted with his pathological amorality creates a very intriguing and ambiguous image. What is most striking about Pechorin in light of his afore-mentioned traits, is his phenomenal physical courage. The story entitled 'Fatalist' is the nail in the coffin of the narrative, juxtaposing the genuine heroism of which Pechorin and men like him are capable of when given the opportunity.
Rating: 
Summary: Move Over Onegin: Enter Pechorin
Review: A Hero of Our Time introduces a most memorable character, Pechorin, who, had the novella been named after him, would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Eugen Onegin in fame. He derives from the same tradition as Onegin, that of the 'superfluous' man, though he moves beyond his predecessor (and prefigures others) in the degree to which he reeks havoc on a personal level. The novella consists of stories only nominally connected, and it is fair to say that the second half is better than the first. The centrepiece is the diary of Pechorin which contains a full narrative of his 'adventures' at a small holiday town. It just has to be read to be believed: it is 'lady-killing' and 'white-anting' at its clinically destructive best. Readers of Eugen Onegin will notice similarities, though the prose form allows much deeper characterisation, for which one is certainly not sorry. Lovers of later 19th-century Russian literature will appreciate this book in its prefiguring of characters and of settings in, among others, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov. Lermontov died young and in a very Romantic fashion (a duel); one can only be sorry that he did not live to write more.
Rating:
Summary: Ah, the Superfluous Man
Review: For those of you who are interested in 19th Century Russian Literature, and are even more so interested in the notion of the "superfluous man", look no further. Having read this years ago in college, I guess I didnt grasp Lermontov's mastery of imagery. Pechorin, the main character of this series of novellas, is on the one hand quite a complex character, but yet on the other hand, a prototype of the superfluous man. I have been told that Pechorin's character is on par with that of Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin, but I haven't read that yet, so I will withhold comment. However, the humor and drama in this short book will certainly reward the reader. 5 Stars!
Rating:
Summary: For fans of travel and adventure
Review: I read 'Bela' and 'Taman' as a second year student of Russian 40 yrs. ago, and read so badly (along with inadequate basis for judgement) that I failed to realize that I was perhaps reading the best travel writing of all time. I reread the book recently because of my interest in Caucasian peoples, due to contact with interesting and friendly Chechnyan refugess in Europe, but with whom we cannot speak enough due to having forgotten what little Russian I had learned. For a recent version of people, life and war in the Caucasus, see Aukai Collins' "My Jihad", and Robert Pelton Jones' "The World's Most Dangerous Places" (Jones is mentioned in Collins' book). Collins' book sheds light on the tribal appeal of Islam to angry, disenherited people (he was converted to Islam while in prison), and reminds superficially of what we've read about Zarqawi's conversion to Jihad and his early days, although Collins (known as Abu Mujahid in the first Chechnyn war, but not to be confused with a terrorist with the same name) never accepted terrorism while the latter has embraced it fully.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent portrait of corruption of the 'hero' Pechorin
Review: Lermontov died age 27 leaving a body of poems and one prose work, a loose collection of stories about his 'anti-hero' Pechorin in "A Hero of Our Times" The novel presents the misadventures of a Tsarist officer through the account of his early friend and through Pechorin's own diary. Pechorin is an immoral man, personifying the corruption of the early nineteenth century military classes in Russia. For the concentration of the evils of Pechorin, for his treachery and seduction, this is a surprisingly 'modern' book, though written in the 1840s. I recommend it for its economy and the strength of its portrayal of Pechorin. By his early death, Russian literature was robbed of a writer who may have joined the pantheon of the great Tsarist novelists.
Rating:
Summary: A hero for their time, a hero for our time?
Review: Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time is terse, yet replete with imagery; a drama and a psychological study told in 150 pages. Through four novellas, the hero, Pechorin, advances a character study that bares (not exposes) a modern Russian man wandering through an age fraught with nihilisic ideology and the devolution of traditional values.
Eschewing ubuquitous cliches that portray brash Russian officers as wastrels and "soliders of fortune," Lermontov speaks from the soul of a very real man with very real fears, passions--and, at the same time--lack thereof. We follow Pechorin and learn his character through the women he loves, or purports to love, the company he keeps (and the way he regards it), and the lives he affects.
A "superfluous" hero in a time of flux, Pechorin seems to wreak havoc everywhere he goes, tarnish everything he touches. Love he regards skeptically--thinking its ardor has been spent on him; friends mean little to him as he lives wholly within his own preoccupations and whims; travel does not excite him--he has seen it all, and continues for lack of better leisure. Reckless adventure and risk-taking seem the only rousing diversion (building upon something of a staple character trait for the Russian novel).
Without values--breaking deals, betraying friends, ignoring every ostensible code of honor, Pechorin is a potentially extraordinary individual corrupted by aimlessness and spiritual hollowness. Interestingly, Pechorin, a hero of Lermontov's time, doesn't seem to have to gone away. Hmm, wasn't there always a Pechorin lurking among us?
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Summary: A Love/Hate Relationship With Duels...
Review: Lermontov's propensity to duel probably gave him the insight to create perhaps the most exciting duel scene in any book I've read. However, it got him killed, leaving behind this lone work of prose. One can only speculate as to what Lermontov would have written if he was not much like his hero Pechorin.
As for the book, it was an exhilerating read. I read it for a Russian history class and I've never had a better discussion in any class than for "A Hero of Our Time". The book touches on so many feelings of disatisfaction combined with apathy that so many feel today. Along with the romantic tone of the story, one would hardly need to be a snobby reader to enjoy it.
Highly recommended is not strong enough language for, in my opinion, the best story Russian literature has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: An overlooked classic
Review: The first I ever heard of this book was in a quote prefacing Camus' "The Fall." I stumbled upon a used copy and decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did, because it is a very interesting and entertaining read. I know of few other novels, especially from this period, that manage to cover as much ground both in terms of narrative action and thematic exploration in so few pages. The novel's themes of love, death, and fate clearly set a precedent for later writers like Dostoyevsky and Turgenev, but Lermontov's voice and style are his own. I give it 4 1/2 stars since it is somewhat rough around the edges. I wonder what Lermontov might have written had he not died so young (and in such romantic fashion!). I look forward to reading his poetry, if I can find it.
Rating:
Summary: A literary landmark
Review: This book is ignored much more than it should be in America. Pechorin is a must know literary character in my opinion. This book is an unbelieveable work of Russian literature at its best. Everyone should read this book just for the amazing psychological character of Pechorin.
Rating:
Summary: Wicked Irony: An Anti-Hero for All Time
Review: This was Lermontov's only novel, published a year before his death in a duel at the age of 27. Although it was written in the late 1830s, it is strikingly modern both in its structure and in its treatment of the hero. In structure, the book consists of a collection of short stories and novellas rather than a single narrative. These stories, however, are linked in two ways. Firstly, all feature the same protagonist, Grigoriy Pechorin, a young officer serving with the Russian army in the Caucasus. Secondly, they are bound together by a complex framework featuring a single anonymous narrator (not to be identified with Lermontov himself), a traveller in the Caucasus. The first story, Bela, is supposedly told to this narrator by Maksim Maksimych, a brother-officer of Pechorin. The second, Maksim Maksimych, is related by the narrator himself and deals with a meeting between Pechorin and Maksim. The other three, Taman, Princess Mary and The Fatalist, are all told in Pechorin's own words, taken from his journal which has come into the narrator's hands after Pechorin's death. It is the fourth tale, Princess Mary, which is the longest and the one which lies at the heart of the work. Bela and Taman are adventure stories with an exotic setting (the Caucasus had the same sort of appeal for nineteenth-century Russians as India had for their British contemporaries). Maksim Maksimych is a linking narrative, and the final story, The Fatalist is an unsettling, spooky treatment of the concepts of fate and predestination. In Princess Mary, the mood changes abruptly from the romantic exoticism of the earlier stories. Pechorin is stationed in a fashionable spa town in the northern Caucasus. Here he has little to occupy his time, and becomes embroiled in liaisons with two women, the Mary of the title (the daughter of an aristocratic family), and Vera, a former mistress of his, now unhappily married to an older husband. As a result of these intrigues, Pechorin quarrels with Grushnitsky, a rival for Mary's affections, and the story culminates in a duel between the two men. The loose, episodic structure of the novel must have seemed very radical to readers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Lermontov also seems to prefigure later developments in the novel in his treatment of the character of Pechorin, a cynical, amoral figure who does not conform to the normal nineteenth idea of a literary "hero". This may make the title of the book seem ironic. Lermontov himself recognises this when he invents a dialogue between his narrator and his imaginary readers. The narrator says that the title of the book would be his reply should anyone ask him for his opinion of Pechorin's character. "But that is wicked irony!" Lermontov imagines his readers replying, to which the narrator's only comment is "I don't know.....". The suggestion is thereby given that the title can be taken both in an ironic sense and also at face value. In a limited sense, Pechorin can indeed be seen as a heroic figure. A common usage of the word "hero" (possibly its original usage) is a person of great bravery, and there is no doubt that, in his duel with Grushnitsky, Pechorin shows both physical courage and indifference to death. What he lacks is the moral stature of the true hero in the unqualified sense of the word. We may admire someone who shows courage in order to help others, or in the service of his country, or in defence of a moral principle. Although this is difficult for us to understand today, people in the nineteenth century (or at least the upper classes from which Lermontov came) may also have admired someone who was prepared to risk death in defence of his honour or the honour of a loved one. What does not seem admirable, either from the perspective of the nineteenth century or from that of the twenty-first, is a contempt for death arising out of boredom with life, and it is this boredom which is the motivation for many of Pechorin's actions. His pursuit of Mary and Vera (like his earlier relationship with the Caucasian girl Bela) is born not of love or affection for the women involved, or even of sexual desire, but rather of a lack of anything better with which to occupy himself. He fights the duel with Grushnitsky not out of a belief that some things are worth dying for, but rather out of a belief that nothing is worth living for. If Pechorin is not a conventional hero, neither is he a conventional literary villain in the sense of a brutal or Machiavellian evildoer, whose evil serves as a contrast to the virtue of the hero or heroine. Although there is something demonic about him in the way he brings misery to others, he is not wholly evil. A surprising side of his character brought out in his journals is his sensitivity to the beauty of nature; vivid descriptions of Caucasian scenery alternate with details of squalid intrigues. This is more than the stock Romantic cliché about wild characters being drawn to wild scenery; Lermontov uses these passages to suggest that even Pechorin sometimes aspires to a better way of life. After the literally breathtaking description of his duel with Grushnitsky, Pechorin concludes the story of Princess Mary with an unexpectedly poetic image, comparing himself to a mariner who has become so used to storm and strife that he cannot abide a peaceful life ashore and who paces the beach, watching for the sail that will take him back to sea. Although there are similar characters in Romantic fiction, such as Pushkin's Onegin, the restless, cynical Pechorin can also be seen as prefiguring the "outsider" anti-heroes of the literature of the mid-twentieth century. (Camus's Meursault and Osborne's Jimmy Porter are examples that come to mind). More than a century and a half after his creation, Pechorin still seems a very modern figure; an anti-hero for our times as much as his own. I finished the book with only two regrets; firstly, that Lermontov's untimely death prevented him from writing any more novels, and secondly that there do not currently seem to be any English versions of his poetry in print.
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