gtomos 's review for:

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

5.0

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So funny that I somehow went into this spoiler-free 20 years after first having wanted to read it. Also that I only skimmed one or two parts towards the end as they contained spoilers for the ending of Gogol's Dead Souls, which I am also going to finally read soon.

I was truly surprised by the book turning into a mystery/procedural at the halfway point. Fascinating to see the - presumably - relative novelty of these genres appearing in this context at this point in time, and the ties with themes of tradition vs modernism, Russia's place within Europe, and so on.

The sweep of characters was excellent. The dialogue was superb and it just carried me away with it, even over long speeches. The structure was so interesting - I was particularly taken with how we return to Kolya and the other boys at the end. Only at that point did I understand the (lovely) digression with Kolya at the beginning of the fourth book.

The move to Ilyusha's funeral at the end was a beautiful way to contextualise this bunch of insane artistos acting like they're in a Carry On film next to the drudging everyday exploitation and inequality.  The outcome of the central plot (and the fates of two of the brothers) then remained beautifully open-ended as we realise - there is so much more going on than we have paid attention to. This is achieved by the funeral basically derailing, and ending maybe prematurely, the central narrative.

The other place where the muzhiks get any space is, of course, in the trial's verdict. The seething resentment of these guys who've had to put up with Karamazov antics over the years is excluded from the narrative but comes back like the return of the repressed. The jury members were, then, immune to all the factual discussion and high-minded moral and progressive discussion of the trial itself and perhaps just wanted to get rid of this annoying rich git. That's one reading, anyway.

Finally - yep I can see why Freud liked this so much. Civilisation and its discontents, the psychologising of the trial, but also just loads of dad stuff.