Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Delitto e castigo by Fyodor Dostoevsky

152 reviews

challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

And what shows that I am utterly a louse,’ [...] ‘is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. 

As soon as I started reading this story, I knew I was gonna love it. The writing was masterful in my eyes and never made me bored even though the story was dragging. The changes of point of view were a choice that was for the most part a success. The characters are so realistic and I was immediately moved by the empathy pouring from every page, which is refreshing. 

This book made me remember why I LOVE reading classics because you can analyse every page and to this day, it's so accessible and doesn't come off as pretentious in any way.

Unfortunately I wanted to love this book more, but I was definitely taken aback from the writing of the female characters, the portrayal of the prisoners, the love story that I hated but more importantly I was disappointed by the lack of development from main character even though all the self awareness that he has. The choices for the ending were kind of disappointing for me...

Even then, this is a masterful piece of work that I loved reading and definitely made me yearn to read another work from this Dostoevsky soon!

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Took me 8 months to finish, with reading slumps in between. 
The story and the translation's language are very easy to understand and stay with the flow of the story. Big books like this, usually scare me off, or I get bored in the middle. Even if I took 8 months to finish this, the story and the flow never bothered me. It was relatable and interesting. 
Some parts dragged way too much, but the story was good overall. The characters' names were a bit confusing since the Russian names's full names and the short names are different, but you get used to it as you read. I liked how the author portrayed the crime and its punishment in so many layers.

Why must Rodion Raskolnikov commit the crime, thinking he has the authority to have a judgment and the right to punish the old pawnbroker woman over her crimes which resulted in Rodion having to go through his own share of crime and punishment? And how he was already being punished before the actual punishment by law. The emotional torment leads him to confess his crime, only to not repent about it later since that was given. And how the rest of the people around him who did not commit any crimes were punished even before the crime happened. It's a crazy book but very real to its core and relatable.
 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I’m surprised at how much I appreciated this book. It’s definitely worth getting through, I think. A word of advice - this book, while about a specific crime and a specific punishment, it is really about “crime” and “punishment” as ideas and realities more broadly, so when he goes off and talks about all these different characters and it takes chapters and chapters to move along with Raskolnikov’s story, recognize that those stories are as important to the point and idea of the book as our main character, even if it seems that that particular side plot wasn’t necessary. I’m really glad I read it!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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