Reviews - Poor Folk | The StoryGraph

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Very sentimental and emotional. I get the impression Warinka (that is a nickname, right? it's Warwara?) is Just Not That Into Him, b./c she is too cultured and too occupied by her own misery. He's totally idealized her and sees her as a saint, she is just trying to survive and he helps her but is not the most important thing in her life. And he is way too volatile. She is at least sensible.

david_rhee's review against another edition

4.0

I'm big on first novels. While it is most rewarding to read your favorite writers' fully matured products and their greatest works, there's something undeniably special about going through works like Player Piano, Crome Yellow, and Poor Folk. Poor Folk is an epistolary novel with a biographical manuscript inserted in between which gives the reader just enough to go on. The details of who's whom and preceding events become less important because Dostoevsky's human psychology is what the reader should be after.

Letters are exchanged between two hard luck lovers met with the difficulties of a commoner's life. Some blows are dealt with circumstance inevitably, but in true Dosteovskian fashion the irrational and ultimately human tendency to make choices leading to one's own detriment and even destruction arises. These ideas bucked stiffly against the contemporary notions of laissez faire which were founded upon the reassurance that people irresistibly were drawn to their self-interest. This is the germ form of that which will be seen in full bloom in the anti-hero of Notes of Underground. Poor Folk is refreshingly simple. That isn't a negative in this case, or to say it is lacking in refinement or technique as if I were astute enough to detect such things. Its simplicity enables the reader to keep sight on what is important, and that is Dostoevsky's human psychology presented in an early stage.