After finishing it, I felt that I must have read it before.

Many years ago, when I first moved to DC, I read some Turgenev, definitely reading Fathers and Sons. I can actually remember being on the metro and reading it. Did I read this too?

Alternatively, the story is just so universal that it feels familiar. A man in early middle age who even now cannot bear to speak the story, but writes it down. The canny, experienced reader realizing early what is happening, but the young version of the narrator incapable of truly seeing. The girl is what might now be called a manic pixie dream girl, but because this is Turgenev, more complex than that cinematic savior of sensitive, white men.