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4.31 AVERAGE

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

I write this review acknowledging that it's sacrilege to blaspheme it with a 4-star rating, but ultimately I feel compelled to share my honest thoughts to better guide others' decisions on whether to read it. After all, what other purpose do reviews have?

The Brother Karamazov is a dense, spiritual, philosophical, and intentionally meandering novel. It centers around the titular brothers, each of which ostensibly represent one of three compelling forces in humanity: sensuality, spiritualism, and intellectualism (though it could be argued any of the three are better served by other labels). In effect, each of the brothers have their moments of triumph and of doubt, and meander into the others' territory for spells at a time.

At times I was absolutely enthralled in Dostoevsky's analysis of the human condition, of the forces constantly pressuring individuals to develop this way and that, and of his allegories that compel the reader to ask difficult questions of themselves and of society. The story of the Inquisitor will stick with me forever. That exploration is the book's genius, in my opinion.

Its weakness is how meandering it is. This manifests not only in the narrative structure, but in individual character's manner of speech. Dialog is unnaturally one-sided: nearly half the characters in the book rave like lunatics for pages upon pages, asking questions they themselves provide answers to rather than engaging in actual discourse. It's hard to tell how much of this is a stylistic choice, and how much of it is representative of the times, but it proved very distracting for me personally.

Anyone interested should read this book, if for no other reason than that it might prove transcendant. But they should do so knowing that it does not serve up its insights on a silver platter -- this is a book you need to work through, and will likely need to revisit. I look forward to doing so at some point.
adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes

icl started off slow asf just setting the scene but i ended up appreciating that so much considering how much just happened & the interactions everyone had with each other was so interesting wow.
adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense 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
adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I'm not quite sure how to rate this novel. It took a hundred pages or so to really get into it (which isn't much considering this novel is eight times the length), but when I did for a while I loved it. I liked the dialogues about religion, the atheist vs orthodox discussions. This was backed up with an interesting story line about the three brothers and their father. Then I got to the part on the trial and I thought it was way too long, I didn't like the long speeches or basically anything about the trial (including the absurd reactions from the people listening), and for some odd reason the book cut away to a story about a boy which I didn't find interesting at all (it even ends with this boys story which seemed very anticlimactic and disappointing). Anyways the first three parts would probably be a 5/5 from me, and the last part a 2/5 so I'll just rate it a 4/5.

Leider elegant and moving