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This is not going to be much of a review. I enjoyed the novella, but I didn't love it.

While reading The Torrents of Spring, I kept comparing Turgenev's Sanin to Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't read much Russian literature, so what I do read, I compare to the few other Russian novels I've read. It could also be because Turgenev referenced Dostoevsky in his letters to Flaubert, so I may have had him on the brain. I'm sure that didn't have anything to do with my lack of love for the novella, though.

Sanin was kind of this macho type of guy, while Raskolnikov was a more sensitive, intellectual type. Raskolnikov thought about doing things; Sanin just did them. For instance, Sanin fought a duel for a young woman who was engaged to someone else because her fiancee didn't step up after she was "insulted" by some military officers. He owned land and serfs; Rasky was without an income.

(And yes, I do realize Raskolnikov acted on things, but he thought about them endlessly before and after.)

**Spoiler Alert**

As a consequence of the duel, Sanin won the love of Gemma, but then threw it away for hot sex with someone else. It was difficult to feel much of anything when he did it because the character of Gemma wasn't written with much depth. In fact, the most interesting character in the novel was the woman with which Sanin had the affair. She was, as "they" say, a pistol.

Even though I liked his letters more than I liked this novella, I don't think this experience will stop me from reading more Turgenev. Knowing he suffered from chronic gout made me laugh when I found this passage amid a novel about love found, love lost, and heartbreak:

Who does not know what a German dinner is like? Watery soup with knobby dumplings and pieces of cinnamon, boiled beef dry as cork, with white fat attached, slimy potatoes, soft beetroot and mashed horseradish, a bluish eel with French capers and vinegar, a roast joint with jam, and the inevitable 'Mehlspeise,' something of the nature of a pudding with sourish red sauce; but to make up, the beer and wine first-rate!

Yum yum.