Ryan Dempsey’s Reviews > First Love and Other Stories > Status Update

nahhh the horse that got injured at the battle of Borodino goes hard 🐴🇷🇺

First Love was interesting, even more so after I learned that Turgenev had weird relationships with women. I didn’t feel too invested though, Zinaida really annoyed me and Vladimir too, but he can be excused since I think it’s intentional that he is confused as a 16 year old. Can’t wait to drop this line on Kieran “beware a woman’s love, beware that happiness, that poison” 😂

Read Asya today. The writing was really nice, lots of descriptions of the Rhine at night and things like that. I was surprised because the writing felt very different to the first two stories. Creasing at this on the wiki:

Leo Tolstoy had a very unfavourable opinion of the novel, dismissing it as "rubbish" and "the weakest thing he [Turgenev] ever wrote”

The Diary of a Superfluous Man was good, I feel bad for Chulkaturin. Bro wanted to write about his life but got stuck analysing a small section living in his head rent free as he wastes away. “In my obliteration I’ll cease to be superfluous… oh, how hot the sun is! It’s powerful rays have the breath of eternity…” rest in peace big man 🥲💀

I’m half way thorough The Diary of a Superfluous Man, it’s quite good. It reminds me a bit of the Death of Ivan Illych but maybe less depressing… we’ll see. I liked the opening section “well, if one must die, one might as well die in the spring”, it reminded me of “spring is a time of plans and projects” or however that quote goes from Anna Karenina only this time the plan is death lmao very Russian