Whilst Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky isn’t bad, I think it’s clear the bar to become a classic was far lower 150-odd years ago than it is now.
As with all my reviews, I’ll be objective about the writing technicalities, and specify where I feel something is valid but not to my taste. My final rating will be an average of my objective score and my personal opinion.
There are no spoilers in this review.
So what is it?
short_synopsis
A destitute man commits a crime and struggles with the consequences.
plot
For such a long book (658 pages, excluding notes), there isn’t a lot of story here – it’s more a study of people and of one person in particular. Given the title, it’s not a spoiler to say a crime is committed; it’s in the first of six parts (plus an epilogue), and the rest of the book meanders rather than pulses with the mystery of whether he’ll get away with it.
Our main character is side-lined for much of part five, when I’d expected the tension to ramp up, which left it feeling largely superfluous.
The main theme is the idea that there are two groups of people: 1) the common man/woman; and 2) geniuses who have a right to do whatever they want and break any law without conscience or repercussions. It’s an interesting concept and I wish it had been explored more thoroughly.
I’m a little wary of criticising classics for being predictable – there’s every chance it was original when it was written and has been copied to death since – but there weren’t many surprises.
people
The main character, Raskolnikov, is incredibly volatile. He veers between calm and sneering anger and back again so quickly that it feels unbelievable. This is excused by the other characters as him being unwell, recovering from some kind of fever, but I’ve never seen anyone flit between contrasting emotions so violently, sick or not.
Many of the character actions felt overly-dramatic – for example, all the women are ready to burst into tears at a moment’s notice. Perhaps people were more like that then (the book was first published in monthly instalments in 1866), but it seems more likely they were exaggerated, as if performed on a stage.
I had trouble believing any of the characters were “real”, but they were quite interesting.
place
The whole story takes place within walking distance of the main character’s home, and the city feels dank, dark, and miserable. Money is scarce, except for a few characters who have a surplus.
The world does feel alive, if a little desperate. Happy, this is not, but it is well drawn and felt more believable than the characters inhabiting it.
prose
This is not an easy read (this is not a criticism, only a comment that it requires a level of focus). The text is very heavy, with a lot of detail, not just in the description of items and people and places, but in actions and thoughts. I wouldn’t call it beautiful writing, but it definitely evokes the right mood for the piece, and isn’t clunky like some other old books I’ve read.
There are multiple examples of characters rambling for up to four pages in one unbroken paragraph – instances like these would have benefited from being punctuated by physical movement or an ignored interruption or something. They can feel like an unnecessary slog, which is a shame because they’re often interesting and/or entertaining.
There are foibles which make reading this a little unusual, such as characters having shortened versions of their names that bear little relation to their full formal names, and with both being used in the same conversation. Also, there are multiple characters that are given very similar names for no obvious reason (one instance of two men; another of three women), and it’s too easy to get them muddled.
conclusion
With a plot-lite book like this, the other facets need to be really strong to make up for it. And they don’t quite get there.
The theme is interesting enough to warrant much more depth than this story gives it, and I was left slightly disappointed, but not sad that I read it. It’s more worthy of the classic tag than Moby Dick (I was not a fan), and whilst this definitely isn’t bad, I’m not sure who I’d recommend it to.
My score: 3 out of 5
A list of the book reviews posted to my blog is here.
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