Book Review: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Former student Raskolnikov commits a crime and then goes through a lot of psychological melodrama as punishment.

I’d been meaning to read this one forever. I loved THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND back when I read them a decade ago. I actually thought, for some reason, that this one was much more about someone serving a sentence in Siberia, so I was surprised when the novel just went on and on with Rasky trying not to incriminate himself, his mental breakdowns, and his long (looooong) conversations with various people including his mother, his sister, the nasty man his sister is engaged to, his best friend, a random drunk he meets in a bar, random drunk’s daughter, and a handful of policemen. Not that all that wasn’t interesting… it was. It just wasn’t what I expected.

It’s worth a read just for Dostoevsky’s keen insight into human nature and his masterful use of language that makes you feel like you yourself have entered Rasky’s mind to feel the same nervousness and fear he does. Not for the impatient reader, but for those who long to be intellectually engaged.