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Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Start date: April 1, 2018

Finish date: June 30, 2018

Discussion: The Hefty Classics

Why we're reading this: 2nd in the Poll with 33 votes! (15/05/2016 - 14/06/2016)
[close] 2nd in the Poll with 33 votes! (15/05/2016 - 14/06/2016)

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What Members Thought

Dec 10, 2007 Chrissie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: philo-psychol, downpour, hf, classics, mystery, favorites, russia, 2014-read, religion, soviet-union

I have already read this, and I DO love Dostoyevsky's writing so I figured I would try this as an audiobook, since it was free at Downpour. Will I give it four stars as I did before?

NO, this time it gets five!!!

Where to start? With the easy stuff. The narration by by Anthony Heald was superb. Some characters cough, some characters have a special evil laugh. Attention was taken to deliver a stupendous performance. I felt I was at a theater. This is a case where the narration is the icing on a de I have already read this, and I DO love Dostoyevsky's writing so I figured I would try this as an audiobook, since it was free at Downpour. Will I give it four stars as I did before?

NO, this time it gets five!!!

Where to start? With the easy stuff. The narration by by Anthony Heald was superb. Some characters cough, some characters have a special evil laugh. Attention was taken to deliver a stupendous performance. I felt I was at a theater. This is a case where the narration is the icing on a delicious cake, an interesting cake that intrigues and is delicious! A narrator can influence how we, the listeners, interpret the personalities of characters and the importance of events. I felt that the written words perfectly matched the narrator's inflections. Some characters are at times very irritating, The narration drove this home perfectly. THEN there is a switch in tone and you begin to see how intelligent that creep really is. I am speaking of the investigating lawyer. Wow, as the story unfolds this character and others come alive. They have depth. Not one person is simple. People are complicated, and my praise for this book focuses primarily on how Dostoyevsky draws his characters. It takes a while to know them, just as it does with real people. People are complicated and Dostoyevsky's characters are all complicated, and so they become real people. If you are a cool, collected and self-assured person not interested in analyzing human behavior, you might differ with my judgment and say the characters are ridiculously emotional, crazy, neurotic. I say they are real people! His characters reflect the behavior of you and I. That is what I say.

When you listen you see where people live, and it is not a pretty picture. You know that painting by Chagall of a twisted bed up in the garret? That is what is delivered, but with words. Life in St. Petersburg in the 1860s, when this novel first came out (1866). Dostoyevsky writes about what he knows.

You also clearly see that this novel was written as a monthly installment for a magazine. Each month's installment grabs your interest, keeps you hanging and at the end you simply are compelled to read the next installment. What will happen? Dostoyevsky delivers not only character analysis but also a page turner. Somebody gets killed. Someone is murdered. Drownings. Parties. Marriages. People run over. A lot happens, and this is not what usually attracts me to a book, but I loved it! I wish contemporary writers could write page-turners as exciting as this.

Dostoyevsky even presents religion in a manner I can swallow. You get a page-turner. You get character analysis, and you get psychological and philosophical knots to untwist. When you commit a crime, how is punishment delivered? ...more

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