First Love

A boy on the edge of a summer, a neighbour’s daughter, a father who is not only a father. Turgenev’s First Love is infatuation as education: jealousy, a duel’s shadow, the first knowledge that desire is not innocent. Russia, youth, and a wound that stays polite. Zinaida is older, brighter, and not a lesson until it is too late. The boy learns the shape of a secret, and that adults have a plot he was not invited to read. The duel is offstage; the education is not.