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Title: Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev ISBN: 0-7861-0512-7 Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks Pub. Date: 01 June, 1981 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 6 List Price(USD): $44.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (50 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: "Revolting" Stuff
Comment: This is an eminently readable book - really a novella at only a couple of hundred pages. Arkady, a student, brings his nihilistic friend Bazarov home to meet his father and uncle. The latter, Pavel Petrovich, is an embittered traditionalist who becomes the natural butt of Bazarov's disrespectfulness and intellectual superiority. A medical student, Bazarov's politics are revolutionary but his main way of putting himself across to his elders is merely to yawn discontentedly. Petrovich abhors and fears the potential consequences of Bazarov's sceptism for people, institutions, ideas, all the marks of "civilisation".

Nihilism, which spawned the Russian revolution, was an intellectual movement in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. It supported the end of serfdom for the workers on estates. Its growth and influence, plus its effect on people of all shades of belief, has recently been brilliantly dramatised, with Turgenev himself as a character, in a trilogy of plays by Tom Stoppard (who wrote the screenplay of _Shakespeare in Love_): _The Coast of Utopia_ ,well worth seeing and reading.

Turgenev's novel, drawn from his own contacts and experiences, was profoundly disturbing in its day and still rings uncomfortably true. Apart from the politics, the characterisation is adept and the descriptions, though scarce, poetic. Lack of a plot is not serious here; I found the book to be a real page-turner because the ideological conflicts drive it.

Rating: 4
Summary: A Plotless Classic
Comment: This was required reading for my Russian literature class because it is considered a classic. My favorite part of this book is the fact that it gives the reader a glimpse of what life was like for the average nobleman of the day...(in the 1850's) It has some interesting descriptions of Russian family life, the life of the peasantry and how the younger generation interacted with the older generation (hence the title, "Fathers and Sons" although the original Russian is called "Fathers and Children"). One of the main characters, Bazarov, is a self proclaimed nihilist who rejects all forms of authority, causing problems for the older generations (his parents & his friend's parents), but attracting the attention of the people of his (the younger) generation. This book has no real plot...it is merely the story of how one man brings his nihilist ideas into other peoples' lives & it gives accounts of everybody else's reactions to these nihilist ideas. It is an interesting book & a pretty quick read, but it can drag in places...especially if the reader is waiting for something interesting to happen. All in all, I believe this book is worth reading, if just to get a taste of "Old Russia", but if you are looking for an exciting "can't-put-it-down-sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-page-turner", you won't find it in this book.

Rating: 5
Summary: There are feelings. Everything depends on them.
Comment: This is such a wonderful novel about two young men returning home from University - Arkady Kirsanov and his friend, Yevgeny who is known mostly as Basarov. Firstly they stop at Arkady's father's poor farm - but he is a landowner. Arkady's father's name is Nikolai and living with him is his brother Pavel. What contrasts we immediately meet - Nikolai whose wife has died (Arkady's mother) but who is living with one of the local peasant women (Fenitchka) and has a son by her, and Pavel whose playboy life collapsed when the princess he hoped to marry rejected him.

So here we have two young men with all the potential of their living beings contrasted with Nikolai and Pavel and their strange life outcomes. What complicates the matter is that Basarov is a nihilist - someone called him the first 'angry young man'. He is cynical and argumentative - prepared to accept Nikolai's simple innocence and honesty in living, unprepared to tolerate Pavel's Anglophile airs and graces.

The young men move on to Basarov's parent's place (simple folk living a traditional old age) but on the way meet Madame Odintsova - quickly called Odintsov (presumably because she is widowed). They spend some time with Odintsov and we learn her name is Anna Sergyevna. Anna lives with her younger sister Katya and and older aunt. The contrasts are once again evident. Anna has no feeling for Arkady at all and quickly Arkady and Katya become friends as Anna and Basarov fascinate each other. But Basarov is appalled at his romantic feelings - not what he expects a nihilist should experience! And when Odintsov's flirting causes him to express that love he has to flee to his parent's place horrified by what he has felt.

But he is no more at home with his parents whose love and affection overwhelms him, so the young men return to the Kirsanov's farm, stopping briefly at Odintsov's country residence where they are not really welcomed. However Arkady, home again, is ill at ease and has to return to Odintsov, leaving Basarov behind. What happens at Odintsov's residence is perhaps not unexpected, what happens at the Kirsanov's farm - with Fenitchka and Pavel is remarkable. Eventually Basarov joins Arkady at Madame Odintsov's before returning home. The outcomes I will leave to Turgenev.

As a mid-fifties person myself I can readily identify with Nikolai and Pavel who see themselves as old, although they too are only fiftyish. But we all have memories and I can see myself as Basarov and Arkady - in some ways each of them, but in no ways entirely either of them. While, as a young man, I too had ideals (anarchist rather than nihilist) that I used to obscure other things in my life, subsequent experiences in my life have lead me to regret that path my life took for a while. Turgenev's outcome for Basarov is entirely in accord with my view. But what then of Pavel?

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing for me about this beautiful novel is that at the end - but not during the novel - I loved each and every one of the characters. The title of this review is a quote (p203 Konemann edition) and it is my feelings that are immensely positive from reading this book.

Other recommended reading:

For a non-Russian view of Russian people read 'Under Western Eyes' by Joseph Conrad