A review by yozhik
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It's well written. The characters are interesting; I wish the book had been about Katerina Ivanovna and Svidrigailov. It's also boring as hell and the ideas and values that Dostoyevsky promotes are terrible. For example, Sonya is equated as being equal in sin to Raskolnikov when he committed murder for no good reason and never felt remorse for it and Sonya
works as a prostitute so that her family may survive. How is trying to survive a sin?
Dostoyevsky also attempts to make some point about how Russians mistreat Germans and that's BAD, that's AWFUL, and then periodically uses the Russian equivalent of "kike" and cannot say a single good word about the Jewish ethnicity which is very ironic. 
All in all it's good to read if you like to think about philosophy and don't mind the Russian habit of ridiculously long sentences and don't care too much about plot-driven books. 
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