abyssalmoon's profile picture

abyssalmoon's review

3.0
dark slow-paced
nini_17's profile picture

nini_17's review

4.0
dark reflective tense fast-paced
dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Fyodor...you silly goofy guy...
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Loveable characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

jorjorwel1975's review

4.25
dark emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
jekutree's profile picture

jekutree's review

5.0

Incredible read. Notes From Underground is perhaps the most scared I’ve ever been to relate to a character. The Underground Man represents everything vile and nasty hidden within all of us. He leans into the misanthropic thoughts we all share about each other and the world we live in. Lots of observations within this book still reign true today which is incredible considering it’s almost 200 years old.

the first half was borderline incomprehensible stream of consciousness ramblings, but the second half was a lot more interesting. mr underground man seems to be the world's most introspective man—he said it himself: "to be too conscious is an illness"—but despite all this introspection, he still seems to make the worst possible decisions. he's just a dilemma: thinks things through so much yet still chooses the objectively worse choice, and is simultaneously self-aggrandising and self-deprecating. all of dostoevsky's novels are just grey (I refuse to believe any of his protagonists have seen a sunny day before) and this was no exception.

the double
this was definitely the worse of the two books (but I'm also gonna reread this next year to see if I'll appreciate it more). I'm not sure if it’s the translation or whatever, but the characters just inexplicably devolved into yoda-speak at times, and repeated the name of the person they were speaking to like 10 times a sentence, and I'm really not sure what to make of it. I just didn't really like it.

reading both of these back to back makes me realise how similar his protagonists are, and having not read any other russian lit thing, I'm not sure if it's a him thing or a genre convention.
dunnya's profile picture

dunnya's review

4.0
dark reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
amelia_71's profile picture

amelia_71's review

3.5
challenging dark tense 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