This book is almost like a short story - I flew through it. However, it's short number of words didn't deter from all that happens in the plot, and all the beauty of Turgenev's characters. While part of the plot leads to what I might see happen on a nighttime soap opera, the characters here, in 1800s Russia, react differently and this was probably the most surprising part for me. And at the same time, there are many things a young 16-year-old Russian boy describes about his first love, that even I, a 25-year-old American girl in 2009, can relate to.