First Love and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

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Summary: An appreciative reader writes....
Review: First love is a wonderful evocation of youth, love and life in 19th century Russian life. I challenge anyone not to be moved by this book, which is both humorous and touchingly melencholic.

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Summary: Lovely for a first Turgenev
Review: I am an avid reader of American and European fiction from the late 19th century onwards and have never delved into the Russians, so, instead of going in headlong to a War and Peace or Brothers Karamazov, i picked up the novella First Love by Turgenev. The writing is simple, the story instantly engaging and the sentiment easy enough to relate to.

Three men sit around following supper and discuss their respective first loves, neither of the first two has an interesting tale to tell, but the third has an intriguing story which he writes down and proceeds to tell us.

Aged 16 our young hero spends the summer in a cottage in the country with his rather detached parents when an aged and impoverished princess and her daughter move in next door. The daughter is beautiful, our narrator becomes infatuated and he suffers all the agony of a first love, a first realisation that such things do not always turn out as we might have hoped, and all the while struggling to understand his own life and his own relationship to his parents.

The twist in the tale is a little obvious and the extra cast of characters perhaps a little under-developed, but the central narrator is a journey through the emotions and his journey is extremely engaging. A very successful first Russian for me and i shall now move on and report back with the findings!!

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Summary: An appreciative reader writes....
Review: If reading in translation has proved difficult for you in the past, Freeborn's translation of Turgenev's short stories will suprise you in a wonderful way. There were times when I forgot that I was in the process of reading, but rather felt that these very scenes were being lived out before me, a bodiless and voiceless viewer.

Turgenev's understanding of and ability to capture the complete emotional processes of people in love in this collection touched me in its sincerity and genuine clarity. All the insane, skipping-over-themselves thoughts and quick jealousies that people experience are completely captured in stories like "First Love" and "Diary of a Superfluous Man."

Turgenev is a great introduction to Russian fiction. I'm sorry that I didn't discover him earlier.

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Summary: Wonderful Example of a Russian Romantic
Review: This book contains three short works that provide a wonderful example of the Russian approach to romantic literature. The form is wonderful, the characters perfectly created and the plot shores up the authors ideas with an most resonant clarity.

First love shows the blend of comedy and tragedy that is so prevalent in Russian works of the period. The events portrayed are those that could occur in daily life even to today. The emotions that are evoked are real and timeless. It surely adds proof to the argument that Russian works of this period age so much better than do those authors from other countries whose works have survived.

Spring Torrents is the longest of the works and still provides a feel that the length is exactly perfect for the tale. If the prologue does not pull you into the story you have an absences of a great concern that plagues many of us. How many of us fear reaching that point (or have reached that point)in life where we recognize all of the great loss of opportunity which has occurred in our life. From this prologue the story races along explaining how one of us has reached the position when the concern has become a reality. Wonderful feelings are evoked on the path.

This book is highly recommended for all and is a must read for the Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol and Dostoevsky fans.

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Summary: It's clear self-sacrifice is sweet for some people
Review: This review is about 'First Love'. It follows the reading of three other Turgenev novels - from which you can guess I like this author a lot. In the three earlier novels ('Fathers and Sons', 'Spring Torrents' and 'Virgin Soil') there is one constant theme - men rejecting women - not because they see the women as inadequate, but because they see themselves as unworthy. In this novel it is the woman who does the rejecting - and the person she rejects is herself - instead of withdrawal we now face self-sacrifice. But why did she see herself as so inadequate when she lined up the group of suitors any one of whom would have accepted her much to the envy of all the others? And her self-sacrifice - why is it to the person to whom it is made? Without any regard to the effects on others - they too are all sacrificed.

If you enjoy the company of women as I do, perhaps you will be repelled by lines such as 'fear the love of women; fear that bliss, that poison....' On the other hand this novel - despite it troubled ending - is wonderfully readable and it gave me a lot to reflect on.