I’m not quite sure how I managed to procure a copy of this book, especially since I never bought it. I think it may have come from my parent’s library and was quietly pilfered when I moved out. Whatever the case may be, I have had this book on my bookshelf it’s been calling to me to be read for quite some time.
I finally took the initiative to digest the pages of this book and am glad that I did. This book fascinated me. Maybe I’ve watched too many crime shows but getting inside criminal’s heads is something that piques my interest.
This book is the story of a young man, Rodian Rashkolnikov, a former university student, who decides to commit a crime under the rationalization that there are some people for whom the law does not apply. The way that Fyodor Dostoevsky writes the thoughts and behavior of a criminal kept me completely absorbed.
Though the vocabulary can be difficult at times and the story jumps around a little bit, with other side stories coming in at odd times the reader is never bored. At least I wasn’t. I always had to know what was going to happen, if Rashkolnikov was going to break under pressure, was he going to be found out? Maybe I have a macabre sense of humor but interspersed in the tale were some moments that made me laugh out loud. Let me just quote on spot that exemplifies the vocabulary but also the humor:
“Pyotr Petrovich belonged to that class of persons, on the surface very polite in society, who make a great point of punctiliousness, but who, when they are directly crossed in anything, are completely disconcerted, and become more like sacks of flour than elegant and lively men of society.”
The image of a sack of flour sitting in a chair all dressed up and trying to look proper just seems humorous to me.
I highly recommend reading this book. It is worth working through the occasionally long paragraphs of psychological dissection of the criminal psyche and seemingly random interjecting side stories to see a story not of redemption or punishment but of hope and enduring love.
