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This book was not off to a good start for me:

“Before the open window of a handsome house, in one of the streets on the outskirts of the provincial town of O, sat two ladies, one of fifty and the other an old lady of seventy.��

What? Who are you calling old? Lol.

Okay, I recovered myself and dove in with good intentions and tackled the second problem, which is just something that comes with reading Russian novels, you have to sort out all those names so that you don’t have to pause and say “who?�� all the time.

But finally, I had conquered them and never blinked knowing that Fyodor Ivanych Levretsky was Fedya and Elena Mikhaylovna Kalitin was also Lenochka.

I settled into the story, and was fairly interested when we got our first glimpses of Fedya (we are on endearment terms at this point) falling for his wife. We are told the moment we meet him that he has left her in Paris, so we know there is going to be something juicy here. But alas, that part passes rather quickly and I dare say everything after that is boring.

I am going to admit to being disappointed that the choice this time for the Obscure group was a Russian novel. The last one was a Russian novel as well, so this might be turning into the Obscure Russian novels group. But, no, that is unfair, because the other Russian novel was The Brothers Karamazov, and that one isn’t even obscure.

If you want to read Turgenev, and you have not read him before, go for Fathers and Sons. Far superior. Some novels are obscure for a reason.