Crime and Punishment

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translators: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Genre: fiction
Publication info: Everyman's Libary, 1993 (originally published in1866)
Pages: 564 (including notes)

It's more than a little daunting to write a review of a classic like this. I'm just happy that I've finally read it. I actually started it last year during the summer, but then school started, and I was forced to stop so I could keep up with an extraordinary amount of reading for school. One year and one change of major later, I was able to come back to this book and read it beginning to end.

And wow.

Now I can see why it's so famous. I find it interesting that it seems to break a lot of the "rules" modern fiction writers talk about. For example, I've heard that it's bad form to use more than one or two exclamation points in a story, but this novel has several on almost every page. It also uses ellipses (. . .) frequently. All this takes some getting used to, but if I've learned one thing about writing, it's that there are no absolute rules. All that matters is what works for the particular story. And these techniques work for this one.

Crime and Punishment is about, well, crime and punishment. It's the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, who, for reasons that are hard to figure out, plans and carries out a rather atrocious murder. This occurs very close to the beginning, so I don't feel bad about revealing it to you. The book concerns the punishment more than the crime. Raskolnikov's crime begins a tangle of plots involving many characters (the large amount of characters is one aspect that makes this book a little difficult). These plots expose many cruelties of life. Innocent people suffer, ill-meaning people succeed, and people in general struggle to get through life.

As with The Castle, I'm not going to attempt any deep, interpretive criticism here. Countless books have been done by people much smarter than I for the same purpose. I will say this, though: this book had a profound impact on me. There are many things I don't understand in it, but reading this book was a deep experience for me.

There are parts that seemed to make me stop breathing. Other parts made me want to cheer out loud. Still others made me want to cry. According to the introduction to the edition I read, Dostoevsky received a lot of criticism for being too melodramatic. I can see where the critics are coming from, but I really don't mind the melodrama. I think it works for the story.

This treasure of a novel is not easy to read. It did take me two tries to finish it. But the experience it gives you is definitely worth the trouble.