Kanchan's review
First Love (Art of the Novella series, The)
by Ivan S. Turgenev
Kanchan's review
First Love (Art of the Novella series, The) by Ivan S. Turgenev
Kanchan's review
rating:
Vladimir (Barksdale), a 16-year-old, is staying in the country with his family and meets Zinaida, a beautiful young woman, staying with her mother, Princess Zasekina, in the wing of the nearby manor house. This family, as with many of the Russian minor nobility with royal ties of that time, were only afforded a degree of respectability because of their titles; the Zasekins, in the case of this story, are a very poor family. The young Vladimir falls irretrievably in love with Zinaida, who has a set of several other (socially more eligible) suitors whom he joins in their difficult and often fruitless search for the young lady's favour. Zinaida, as we find throughout the story, is a thoroughly capricious and somewhat playful mistress to a set of rather love-struck suitors. She fails to reciprocate Vladimir's love in a sensible and honest manner, often misleading him, mocking his comparative youth in contrast to her early adulthood. But eventually her true feelings, the real object(s) of h...more
