A review by christianholub
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3.0

Reviewing this book is a bit of a paradox. It changed my life, but it's not one of my favorite books. It's fun to discuss the questions this book raises, but it's not fun to read it. For being a 'realist' novel, characters spend most of their time standing up suddenly and declaring their spiritual conversion. There's a lot of good philosophy in here (atheists, Christians, and Agnostics will all find some convincing evidence for their side of the argument) but I feel there's too much showing and not enough of the 'telling' I expect from great novels. I also don't have a favorite character, probably because it's hard to differentiate between them; they each speak the same way, and react to things in pretty much the same way. It's not a good book. But it is good for the soul.