This big doorstop of a book was one of the longest term residents of my TBR shelf, subjected to endless procrastination, until it became the book of the month for one of the groups I belong to. I'm sorry I waited so long to read it, because it's a very absorbing book. It's like Dostoyevsky crammed a whole world of people, ideas, and situations into it that just draws you in so that you find yourself reading much bigger chunks than you really had time for that day.
The main plot line is of course the family story of the Karamazovs: Fyodor, the vicious, womanizing father who is found murdered in his home one night, and his four sons Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, all very different from one another in character and personality, who are suspects. Along the way we also get to learn about their friends and romantic interests, like the saintly priest Father Zosima, the good hearted but calculating courtesan Grushenka, the proud but self-sacrificing lady Katya, the precocious fatherless boy Kolya, garrulous widow Madame Hohlakov, and the impoverished Snegiryov family. Dostoyevsky's famous prose poem, "The Grand Inquisitor" is a chapter in this book--presented as a composition of Ivan's.
This is not a tidy novel where all the plot lines are neatly ended and tied up with a bow at the end. It's a big sprawling thing with a lot of loose ends, like in real life. But I was interested enough in the characters to wish that Dostoyevsky wrote a sequel, to continue some of their stories.
The main plot line is of course the family story of the Karamazovs: Fyodor, the vicious, womanizing father who is found murdered in his home one night, and his four sons Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, all very different from one another in character and personality, who are suspects. Along the way we also get to learn about their friends and romantic interests, like the saintly priest Father Zosima, the good hearted but calculating courtesan Grushenka, the proud but self-sacrificing lady Katya, the precocious fatherless boy Kolya, garrulous widow Madame Hohlakov, and the impoverished Snegiryov family. Dostoyevsky's famous prose poem, "The Grand Inquisitor" is a chapter in this book--presented as a composition of Ivan's.
This is not a tidy novel where all the plot lines are neatly ended and tied up with a bow at the end. It's a big sprawling thing with a lot of loose ends, like in real life. But I was interested enough in the characters to wish that Dostoyevsky wrote a sequel, to continue some of their stories.
