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samlo_books's review against another edition
1.0
I literally could not finish this book. I wanted to like it. I received a copy as a result of a Goodreads giveaway and the description sounded promising. But I got 200 pages in and could not tell you the point. I’ve never given up on a book no matter how bad it was, but this one I could not force myself to finish.
macabrereadersam's review against another edition
1.0
I literally could not finish this book. I wanted to like it. I received a copy as a result of a Goodreads giveaway and the description sounded promising. But I got 200 pages in and could not tell you the point. I’ve never given up on a book no matter how bad it was, but this one I could not force myself to finish.
brynhammond's review
3.0
I came to this because of Sheck's piece 'Dostoyevsky's Empathy' in the Paris Review (https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/11/11/dostoevskys-empathy/). You can say this book has the same theme, empathy -- even that it's a fictionalisation of that Paris Review piece.
And yet, and yet. It failed to move me. Sheck revolves around those passages in the life and works of Dostoyevsky that are most significant to me, too (of course: 'D's Empathy' most closely expresses my own reception of D. You didn't ask, but my 'truest' scholarly interpretation is the D. chapter in Aileen Kelly's [b:Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance|724934|Toward Another Shore Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance|Aileen M. Kelly|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347293167s/724934.jpg|711154]). Sheck's iteration and citation of those moments x20 did not charge them with further significance but drained them for me. I'm scared now I've overdosed on the encounter between Myshkin and the murderer Rogozhin, when I've read The Idiot 5-6 times and don't mean to stop. In D.'s novel, these are a few pages at the end of 600pp. Here it is rehashed, without addition, unto surfeit. D. told his boyhood story of Marey the peasant several times, but not nearly as frequently as Sheck. I am now sick to the back teeth of Marey the peasant, which does a disservice (it's the ultimate sacrilege to say that, and I'll regret it).
This is a non-novel. Which is fine, although out of tune with D. who wrote novels, known for deep-dive into people (and he'd almost certainly be perplexed by the intellectualisation of his content in this work). It seemed to me 'magical' without an anchor in 'realism', with a couple of over-weird and under-developed protagonists of Sheck's, otherwise populated by the casts of Bulgakov's [b:The Master and Margarita|117833|The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327867963s/117833.jpg|876183] and selected D. novels; along with D. biography, the painter Titian and documentation of a plague in Venice. There's extensive endnotes and huge bibliography.
Dammit, Pilate features heavily -- he wandered in out of Bulgakov -- and the first novel I ever wrote, my childhood novel, was about Pilate: This should have been perfect for me! I'll stick to her pieces on D. in mags. She also has two on The Idiot and the conception of Island of the Mad.:
https://granta.com/best-book-1868-dostoevskys-idiot/
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/by-heart-laurie-sheck-discusses-dostoevsky-the-idiot/510464/
I still rec it for Dostoyevsky types. I don't know what you'd make of it if you aren't.
And yet, and yet. It failed to move me. Sheck revolves around those passages in the life and works of Dostoyevsky that are most significant to me, too (of course: 'D's Empathy' most closely expresses my own reception of D. You didn't ask, but my 'truest' scholarly interpretation is the D. chapter in Aileen Kelly's [b:Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance|724934|Toward Another Shore Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance|Aileen M. Kelly|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347293167s/724934.jpg|711154]). Sheck's iteration and citation of those moments x20 did not charge them with further significance but drained them for me. I'm scared now I've overdosed on the encounter between Myshkin and the murderer Rogozhin, when I've read The Idiot 5-6 times and don't mean to stop. In D.'s novel, these are a few pages at the end of 600pp. Here it is rehashed, without addition, unto surfeit. D. told his boyhood story of Marey the peasant several times, but not nearly as frequently as Sheck. I am now sick to the back teeth of Marey the peasant, which does a disservice (it's the ultimate sacrilege to say that, and I'll regret it).
This is a non-novel. Which is fine, although out of tune with D. who wrote novels, known for deep-dive into people (and he'd almost certainly be perplexed by the intellectualisation of his content in this work). It seemed to me 'magical' without an anchor in 'realism', with a couple of over-weird and under-developed protagonists of Sheck's, otherwise populated by the casts of Bulgakov's [b:The Master and Margarita|117833|The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327867963s/117833.jpg|876183] and selected D. novels; along with D. biography, the painter Titian and documentation of a plague in Venice. There's extensive endnotes and huge bibliography.
Dammit, Pilate features heavily -- he wandered in out of Bulgakov -- and the first novel I ever wrote, my childhood novel, was about Pilate: This should have been perfect for me! I'll stick to her pieces on D. in mags. She also has two on The Idiot and the conception of Island of the Mad.:
https://granta.com/best-book-1868-dostoevskys-idiot/
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/by-heart-laurie-sheck-discusses-dostoevsky-the-idiot/510464/
I still rec it for Dostoyevsky types. I don't know what you'd make of it if you aren't.
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