Books by author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

I had been meaning to read this for a while. I received a beautiful Everyman hardcover edition for my birthday last year, and it's a pleasure to hold, but I was a bit intimidated by what I'd heard about reading 19th century Russian writers, particularly Dostoevsky. In retrospect, my fears were unfounded, as Crime and Punishment is not a particularly difficult read.

I do, however, have some advice for others who want to read Dostoevsky. First, make sure you get an edition with a one-page guide to the variants of the characters' names. Second, keep a pencil and notecard nearby and jot down short descriptions of each character (i.e., Raskolnikov (Rodya) = protagonist, Avdotya (Dunya) = his sister) as they appear and develop. There are only about a dozen important characters, but a couple of them pop up unexpectedly and it's easy to forget how they tie in.

The plot of Crime and Punishment is simple and fairly easy to follow: a murder is committed at the beginning, and the novel deals with the psychology of the murderer, his family and acquaintances, and the police detectives searching for the killer. There are a number of well-written dream sequences, and the most important thing to keep track of is Raskolnikov's state of mind. I highly recommend the Knopf Everyman's Library edition both for it's high quality and for the endnotes, which helped sort out some of the 19th century Russian cultural references (and French, German, and Polish quotations) for me.

I found the very end (last 10 pages) to be somewhat unsatisfying; I think Dostoevsky pulled his punch. Perhaps he was afraid that his audience wouldn't accept the book without a happy ending. Please contact me if you think I'm wrong about this.