Reviews - The Idiot | The StoryGraph

2.24k reviews for:

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.04 AVERAGE

kostopoulos2000's review against another edition

5.0

insane literary experience and a story I know I’ll treasure for a long time. So excited to reread this in like a decade or two when it’ll indubitably take on a completely different meaning to me

vilja13's review against another edition

3.75

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

marthagal's review against another edition

3.0

I feel like an asshole giving this only three stars, as it is, like, Dostoevsky and shit. I actually loved the Part One of the book and plowed through the first 300 pages like it was no one's business. The next 350 pages, however, were a bit of a slog. The introduction says the the Part One would would great as a novella, and I would agree. The rest seemed disjointed and all the characters started pissing me off.

grandadnaima's review against another edition

4.75

dark emotional reflective sad medium-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

estrogenism's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

nunuseli's review against another edition

4.0

La primera parte de El idiota es lo mejor que se ha escrito nunca. Punto. Luego creo que pierde un poco de fuelle. Es inevitable. Nada podría resistir a la comparación de la primera parte de El idiota. Especialmente el resto de El idiota.

jldavis's review against another edition

4.0

Note: I’ve read The Brothers Karamazov (TBK) and Notes from Underground (NFU) and loved them both with TBK being my favorite novel.

The Idiot is the strangest of the 3 Dostoevsky books I’ve read. It had the best idea for a novel but isn’t as satisfying as NFU/TBK. The concept of a completely pure and innocent man (think Aloshya without the religion) thrown into a world of greed and deceit is so brilliant. It was rewarding but not as much as I hoped.

Part of the problem was the plot wasn’t high stakes and it wasn’t completely clear what the arc was. There was an obvious love story but it was hard to tell if that’s what we were looking to resolve.

It is also the less philosophical of the three and is very much like a play. The whole first part takes place in around 5 locations. Often a set piece would span considerable pages and be nothing but dialogue. However that didn’t make it any easier to understand than TBK.

The characters aren’t as good as his other works. In fact there’s a start of a chapter in part 4 where Dostoevsky goes meta and tries to reason about ordinary characters.

Overall I’m glad I read it. NFU is still the best intro to his work. TBK is still his best work.