Despite being rather short, this little novella took me a while to get into. It is broken into two parts--the first part consisting of the unnamed protagonist's thoughts on life and humanity, and the (much longer) second part consisting of a brief episode from the protagonist's life.
While I recognized that there were many pearls of wisdom in Part I, the lack of plot in that section made the reading a bit slow-going. Nonetheless, once I got to Part II, I found myself truly intrigued by the story, which illustrated through plot some of the thoughts of Part I. In the end, I found myself completely captivated by the character of the protagonist, though I'm still not sure I've "figured him out" yet. I view this as a strength of the novel, as I'm sure I'll continue to ponder it for some time, and probably reread it in the future.
This was a good introduction to Dostoevsky (whose work I had not read before), and made me interested in reading more of his novels.
4.0/5.0 stars.
While I recognized that there were many pearls of wisdom in Part I, the lack of plot in that section made the reading a bit slow-going. Nonetheless, once I got to Part II, I found myself truly intrigued by the story, which illustrated through plot some of the thoughts of Part I. In the end, I found myself completely captivated by the character of the protagonist, though I'm still not sure I've "figured him out" yet. I view this as a strength of the novel, as I'm sure I'll continue to ponder it for some time, and probably reread it in the future.
This was a good introduction to Dostoevsky (whose work I had not read before), and made me interested in reading more of his novels.
4.0/5.0 stars.
