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2.5 stars.Turgenev was a writer I loved and admired in my early-20s for his tales of unrequited love, emotional atmosphere, and Germanic-influenced style. I decided to return to his writing now that I'm reaching middle age, starting with "Mumu," and I quickly found myself perhaps too cynical to accept many of those same characteristics that drew me to his writing as a younger man. We have a lovelorn deaf-mute. An oppressive caste system. An abandoned dog. It has all the markings of a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. It's not that I reacted negatively to the emotionally manipulative elements; I just didn't really react at all. It felt too contrived. Was this an isolated trait of one Turgenev tale, or was this the norm for the Turgenev that I loved when I was 23? I'm not sure. I'd need to read more -- and perhaps reread some of his work -- to figure out if I may have fallen away from Turgenev's writing, or if this was just a one-off occurrence.