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victoriarosereads 's review for:
Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles W. Goddard
I feel like I could write a killer essay on this book. I kept noting quotes which I could use to argue the themes of the book and almost wanted to use sticky notes to mark them. This might have been due to the fact that this book felt like homework to read.
The idea of a book with an insane protagonist is a lot more fun in theory than in practice. Yes, I understand there's a connection to his poverty and his shitty worldview to the fact he was never healthy and coherent, but I just wanted a protagonist who acted normal for even a second. So many of the characters in this book do not act like people. Conversations go on for multiple pages of monologue where the other person presumably just sits and waits for their turn, and then they might end it by kissing the other person's feet. Or as the alternate option, they might start yelling and just walk away!
There were moments of enjoyment, and the last hundred pages or so of the book really picked up the pace (the interaction between the sister and the creep had me genuinely shocked), but it felt like the author was trying to test our patience. It honestly made me start questioning if there were editors when this was written, and about when editors could have started becoming popular, and how I wasn't sure this would be able to be published under the editing standards of today, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, which seemed like a sign that I wanted to think about anything other than what I was reading. If anyone wants an essay on this though, I've got you.
The idea of a book with an insane protagonist is a lot more fun in theory than in practice. Yes, I understand there's a connection to his poverty and his shitty worldview to the fact he was never healthy and coherent, but I just wanted a protagonist who acted normal for even a second. So many of the characters in this book do not act like people. Conversations go on for multiple pages of monologue where the other person presumably just sits and waits for their turn, and then they might end it by kissing the other person's feet. Or as the alternate option, they might start yelling and just walk away!
There were moments of enjoyment, and the last hundred pages or so of the book really picked up the pace (the interaction between the sister and the creep had me genuinely shocked), but it felt like the author was trying to test our patience. It honestly made me start questioning if there were editors when this was written, and about when editors could have started becoming popular, and how I wasn't sure this would be able to be published under the editing standards of today, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, which seemed like a sign that I wanted to think about anything other than what I was reading. If anyone wants an essay on this though, I've got you.