great book
not light reading

My favorite one...
The Prince Miskin - one of a kind, a great figure. Enjoyed every single page of the book - even though the ending is somewhat sad... but realistic. ( )

My second book by Dostoevsky. It's about the character of a man named Prince Myshkin and how he affects those around him. Although most people consider him an idiot because of his simplicity, he abounds in humility and selfless love that people can't help but be attracted to. ( )

1530 The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky translated by David Magarschack (read 3 Aug 1979) This book, read while on a trip to Europe, was not at all what I expected. It was really heavy going, and, though I am supposedly much better attuned to the meaning of great literature now than previously, I felt the book evinced its 1869 composition date much more than Crime and Punishment (read when I was practically uneducated: 1948) and The Brothers Karamazov. The book was full of talk, and some of the characters never came alive for me. And I felt the idiot was such, and saw nothing of Christ in him--in fact, his diatribe against Christ's Church as far as I was concerned made him most un-Christ-like. ( )

I liked The Idiot quite a bit, but I was disappointed by the way it ended. I'll spoil a bit of it for you now without specifics: it doesn't end well or happily. It doesn't end like I expected, however. The way the book is set up, it could hardly end happily for everyone involved, but I didn't expect it to be quite the downer that it was. The book was well-written, the characters were very well drawn and distinct, though some of the dialogue was a bit confusing and I blame it on the translation from Russian.

The eponymous character from The Idiot is not actually an idiot, but rather someone who is considered so because of the open, honest and naive way that he meets the world. One hopes for him to triumph, to come out on top, but unfortunately his fate is more realistic than that. He, in some ways, reminded me of Alexei from The Brothers Karamazov.

The Idiot is a good book; it's worth reading even if it isn't as edifying as The Brothers Karamazov, but be warned that it won't end even as well as The Brothers Karamzov does. ( )