Marai, Turgenev

I finished reading Marai's Memoirs of Hungary, and it was as good as the first few pages, right to the end. I still recall one of the last lines: "The train began to move, and we went forward into a world where no one was waiting." Very poignant. The man is also a great anti-Communist. I also read more of Turgenev's novels: Sketches of a Sportsman, and Torrents of Spring. Torrents is merely a tale of love lost -- I am getting bored with sentimental efforts, but also these novels are the same as other sentimental 19th century novels, there is no difference, as the French would say. I enjoyed Sketches the most, I like a good pastoral, but the author recounts terrible things like the beating of a Jew or the despair of a serf with a lightheartedness unbecoming to a modern reader.