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kris_mccracken 's review for:
The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The premise is not unfamiliar: an 'innocent' - Prince Lyov Nikolaevich Myshkin - is a man whose goodness, honesty and sincerity lead those more worldly characters around him to assume that he is an 'idiot'.
Of course, things are never that straightforward in a 19th Century Russian novel, and we must wade through hundreds and hundreds of pages of innumerable characters with infuriatingly similar patronyms (and indeed matronyms too). We haunt parties, dinners, arguments, journeys, dreams, visions, memories on an on as we accompany a "truly good man" in a debased world with no use for good men, and thus we must cringe for page after page as his goodness and innocence causes damage to everyone he encounters.
It's not hard to predict from page one that this story will not end well for anyone.
A book such as this is bound to have its share of admirers and detractors, and I know some bemoan it as tedious or overwrought (not entirely untrue), but it held my interest. The first half positively rattles through, and although things get a bit rambling in the final quarter, I was invested enough to see it through.
The conclusion is, of course, satisfyingly bleak.
Not for the faint hearted.
Of course, things are never that straightforward in a 19th Century Russian novel, and we must wade through hundreds and hundreds of pages of innumerable characters with infuriatingly similar patronyms (and indeed matronyms too). We haunt parties, dinners, arguments, journeys, dreams, visions, memories on an on as we accompany a "truly good man" in a debased world with no use for good men, and thus we must cringe for page after page as his goodness and innocence causes damage to everyone he encounters.
It's not hard to predict from page one that this story will not end well for anyone.
A book such as this is bound to have its share of admirers and detractors, and I know some bemoan it as tedious or overwrought (not entirely untrue), but it held my interest. The first half positively rattles through, and although things get a bit rambling in the final quarter, I was invested enough to see it through.
The conclusion is, of course, satisfyingly bleak.
Not for the faint hearted.