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A review by levendir1021
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1.0
I’ve been debating my rating of this book for a very long time. But in the end, I decided to settle on the one star, let me explain.
I am forever an optimist, this book is the complete opposite of that. This is probably why I absolutely hated it.
The book is divided into two parts. A shorter one in which the narrator talks about his thoughts, philosophies, etc. in form of a monologue and stream of consciousness. It's all over the place.
In the second part, he tells us about a few things that have happened in his life, his thought process during them and then just… ends.
There is definitely something genius about Dostoevsky managing to craft such an unlikeable, horrible protagonist. This might be a very excellent study on human nature and that is where I want to give this book credit. It’s not meant to be a fun read and I have read such books before and still managed to get a lot out of it.
Not this one though.
And I really, really tried.
The protagonist of this book is pathetic. He is the vilest and self-centred, sorry for himself person I think I have EVER read about. And every time I thought that maybe he was on to something he immediately was thinking of or doing something that roused all kinds of negative emotions in me. And you know what, maybe that was the point of this book because what did fascinate me was how incredibly self-aware the protagonist seemed to be and how some character responded to the protagonist in a way that I thought about responding.
However, that did not manage to save this short story in the slightest. The protagonist claims himself to be very smart, yet I can't see that to be the case at any point in the story and considers himself better than everyone while having achieved basically nothing and being socially outcast. He treats everyone around him horribly yet somehow expects people not to do the same with him. His anger and superiority complex is present on almost every page; he is literally the worst.
I understand that he is stuck, hasn’t managed to find his place in the world. And again, this is most likely an amazing character study, however, the never-ending contradictions, the pure malice and stupidity that this character shows didn’t manage to do that for me at all.
I would have DNFed this if it was not for my book club but I think that is enough Dostoyevsky for me.
I am forever an optimist, this book is the complete opposite of that. This is probably why I absolutely hated it.
The book is divided into two parts. A shorter one in which the narrator talks about his thoughts, philosophies, etc. in form of a monologue and stream of consciousness. It's all over the place.
In the second part, he tells us about a few things that have happened in his life, his thought process during them and then just… ends.
There is definitely something genius about Dostoevsky managing to craft such an unlikeable, horrible protagonist. This might be a very excellent study on human nature and that is where I want to give this book credit. It’s not meant to be a fun read and I have read such books before and still managed to get a lot out of it.
Not this one though.
And I really, really tried.
The protagonist of this book is pathetic. He is the vilest and self-centred, sorry for himself person I think I have EVER read about. And every time I thought that maybe he was on to something he immediately was thinking of or doing something that roused all kinds of negative emotions in me. And you know what, maybe that was the point of this book because what did fascinate me was how incredibly self-aware the protagonist seemed to be and how some character responded to the protagonist in a way that I thought about responding.
However, that did not manage to save this short story in the slightest. The protagonist claims himself to be very smart, yet I can't see that to be the case at any point in the story and considers himself better than everyone while having achieved basically nothing and being socially outcast. He treats everyone around him horribly yet somehow expects people not to do the same with him. His anger and superiority complex is present on almost every page; he is literally the worst.
I understand that he is stuck, hasn’t managed to find his place in the world. And again, this is most likely an amazing character study, however, the never-ending contradictions, the pure malice and stupidity that this character shows didn’t manage to do that for me at all.
I would have DNFed this if it was not for my book club but I think that is enough Dostoyevsky for me.