First Love First Love
5 journalers for this copy...
Released 10 yrs ago (1/28/2014 UTC) at Monthly BookCrossing Meet Up in York in York, North Yorkshire United Kingdom
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Released 9 yrs ago (10/28/2014 UTC) at Brigantes Bar & Brasserie OBCZ / Meetup Venue in York, North Yorkshire United Kingdom
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
First Love tells the story of a young man's love for the girl next door. But she's troubled and in need of attention from a series of suitors. Turgenev shows the headiness of adolescent love, of its desperate obsession. Fabulous and tragic.
To be released at the monthly York Bookcrossing meetup.
Released 9 yrs ago (2/24/2015 UTC) at Brigantes Bar & Brasserie OBCZ / Meetup Venue in York, North Yorkshire United Kingdom
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
It is also, as the title suggests, a tale of first love, and the obsession and the crushing unrealistic nature of it all. Vladimir Petrovich is a young 16 year old naive Russian boy of a well to do family. On his summer hols, a poverty stricken, aristocratic mother and daughter move in next door. He falls head over heels with the daughter, Princess Zinaida, and simpers and sobs over her and runs about after her like a little puppy dog. All rather pathetic, but I suppose we've all had our regretable moments in our teens. Zinaida emotionally feeds off this stuff, and plays with him and a selection of other men who come fawning to her every day and strut about like little roosters, trying to look like the best man of the group. And she has them all wrapped around her little finger, quite literally in Vladimir's case. There's this wonderful bit when she's in a temper and literally yanks a tuft of hair out of his head. "She carefully straightened the torn lock, curled it around her finger and twisted it into a little ring" (p 66).
She doesn't get on with women, as I guess they are competition and can't feed her ego in the way men can. She and Vladimir's mother never get on from the word go, his mother taking an immediate dislike, and the princess being little Miss Snooty-pants whenever she pops by. In consideration of what transpires, his mother has good reason not to like the girl.
I guess we all have to learn from our mistakes, and poor old Vladimir has to have his innocence shattered with the age old lesson 'love stinks', with a galling betrayal as Zinaida trots off after the man who isn't constantly playing court to her.
Marvellous short story/novella, but my, what a character to hate! (Me being female, I guess I was never going to get along with Zinaida =) )
Released 8 yrs ago (5/23/2015 UTC) at Brigantes Bar & Brasserie OBCZ / Meetup Venue in York, North Yorkshire United Kingdom
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
- I enjoy reading the classics, I think the discipline is good for my soul, although I'm not as slavish about reading one a month as I was for a few years until recently
- I've been particularly impressed with some Russian clasics, particularly War and Peace and Anna Karenina
- the only Turgenev I've read is Fathers and Sons which I enjoyed
- and it's surprisingly short for its time and place!
A painful tale of first love in the summer of 1883, age 16, in the Russian countryside.
Released 8 yrs ago (7/31/2015 UTC) at Parliament Street Cafe at Edinburgh Woollen Mill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire United Kingdom
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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