Crime and Punishment

Synopsis: A troubled young man commits the perfect crime - the murder of a vile pawnbroker whom no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money, but convinces himself that his motive for the murder is to benefit mankind. So begins one of the greatest novels ever written, a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller, and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption.

Review: I'll start with a quote from Virginia Woolf about Dostoevsky because she puts it better than I ever could ...“The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled around, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Outside of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.”

If he has written a better book than this then all I can say is wow! that book must be phenomenal because this one is just extraordinary. The book opens with a murder and that you continue, if not to have sympathy, then to have compassion for the murderer is quite an achievement. It's not as if the murder is an act of revenge or honour. It's a cruel and senseless act (which, through mischance, becomes even more so) and we're not told why Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov decides to commit it apart from that he feels in some way pre-destined to do it and also that he feels he could do some good with the wealth that will come from it and become an extraordinary man.

click here to continue review - possible spoilers

Perhaps it's his reaction to what he's done that convinces us his heart is not truly evil. His body sinks into illness and fever and his unquiet mind is a maelstrom of hallucinations and delusions which at times border on insanity. If anyone is going to incriminate him then it is he himself for his behaviour is nothing short of ludicrous. He revisits the scene of the crime and makes preposterous statements which hint at his guilt. He veers from wishing to conceal his crime to wishing to confess it, it's a burden that weighs him down and this burden is intensified one hundred fold when his behaviour attracts the suspicion of police detective Porfiry. I loved the depiction of Porfiry with all his wily sarcasm and veiled hints. His words weigh so heavily on Raskolnikov that they do far more damage than any outright accusation or arrest could ever do. They gnaw away at him and he tortures himself with thoughts of Porfiry and what he may or may not know. But more crushing to him than the crime itself is the fact that he has failed to execute it properly .. he will never be the great man he aspired to be and his pride is wounded.

Dostoevskys writing is quite reminiscent of Dickens (calling to mind 'Our Mutual Friend' in particular), perhaps even tipping into Dickensian sentimentality at times with his depiction of prostitute (not in the unwashed, syphilis ridden way or yet in the glamorous, good time girl sort of way but in the virtuous, chaste, sacrificing all for the family or they would starve type of way) Sonya, but he doesn't go overboard and get quite as maudlin as Dickens. Raskolnikov is drawn to Sonya and she may well prove to be his saving grace. There's a great mix of characters, the destitute Marmeladovs, the cunning and twisted Svidrigailov, the good humoured and amiable Razumhikin and Rodion's devoted and loyal mother and sister.

It is dark, brooding and claustrophobic (for a lot of it you are festering inside Rodion's head), there is hardly any light, but for all that it's still hugely entertaining. There is plenty of absurdity and of course lots of suspense .. you get caught up very quickly in this immense battle of good and evil playing out in the heart of Raskolnikov. But the tension doesn't belong solely to him there is plenty to keep you on the edge of your seat in the scenes between the evil Svidrigailov and Rodion's sister Dunya.

I'll end with another famous quote ..."All I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness." -- Robert Louis Stevenson on reading Crime and Punishment.

A House for Mr Biswas

Synopsis: 'A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion' - Anthony Burgess. "A House for Mr Biswas" is V.S. Naipaul's unforgettable third novel and the early masterpiece of his brilliant career. Born the 'wrong way' and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he becomes indignantly dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in an arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. Heartrending and darkly comic, "A House for Mr Biswas" has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels and this triumph of resilience, persistence and dignity masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad. 'A marvellous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels' - "Newsweek".

Review: This book is one of Susan Hill's recommendations from her book 'Howards End is on the Landing' and it's one of those books that mix comedy with pathos so although it's very funny in places there's an underlying sadness running through it. Though Mr Biswas's parents hail from India, the book is set in rural Trinidad where he is born. Mr Biswas (as he is always referred to, even as a baby) is ill fated from the start. When he is born, the midwife shouts that he is 'six-fingered and born the wrong way' and the pundit declares that 'he will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. the boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well' .. his family are warned to keep him away from trees and water and his father is forbidden to look at him for twenty one days and even then his first glance of him should be in the reflection of some coconut oil. Bad luck certainly seems to follow him around throughout his childhood and beyond. As a young adult, he goes to work for the Tulsi family at their store and is attracted to their daughter Shama, and writes her a love letter. The next thing he knows the Tulsi's have got them married off and he feels he has been tricked into it.

He spends the rest of his life trying to escape from the confines of being a Tulsi family member and all that entails. There are many generations of them living and working together and their lives are steeped in age old devotions, rituals and customs. There's a pecking order too and Mr Biswas, having only lately entered the family, is pretty low down. He'd like to be independent, he'd like a house of his own, he is constantly uprising, but most of his efforts are futile and his large and small rebellions thwarted. The story of his adult life is like one great big groundhog day, he needs a job, he needs transport, he needs somewhere to live. All of these things can and often are provided for him by the family, but he longs to break free and often does only to fail miserably and have to return with his tail between his legs (in spirit that is .. in truth he is anything but daunted and continues relentlessly with his verbal haranguing of the family.) So instead of living in a modicum of comfort he'll sometimes take himself off and attempt to have a 'house' built, only for it to turn out to be the most ramshackle old hut that ever was seen.

The person I felt most sorry for was his wife Shama constantly caught in the crossfire between her family and Mr Biswas with seemingly little affection from any of them. You don't get to know her well, you don't get to know anyone but Mr Biswas well, but you know enough to feel great sympathy for her and the children. There are small victories, Mr Biswas eventually gets a job working as a journalist for the Trinidadian 'Sentinel' (and this part of the book I loved, he writes some seriously outlandish articles and reports) and he is able to acquire a car but it's always two steps forward, two steps back. His ambition is to die in his own house and to liberate his son Anand through education (and much effort is put into this including feeding him on a 'brainfood' diet of milk and prunes.) Although you do root for him, he's not altogether likeable but still you find yourself laughing at his almost childish behaviour and insults. There's a part of you that admires him for refusing to conform but then there's another part of you that just wishes, for the sake of his family, he'd just settle for a quiet life. You want to both shake him and pat him on the back .. he really is a bizarre, frustrating character but an immensely interesting one.

It was a longer story than I thought, I have an old penguin copy and the book doesn't look very big but it turned out to have 590 closely written pages and it took me forever to plough my way through it. It didn't help either that the book started crumbling as I read it and I lost big chunks of it each time I picked it up. I enjoyed it though and want to read more by him, I was disappointed that this wasn't on the 1001, some other books by him are and I knew I'd seen it on a list .. it turned out to be Susan Hill's list of books she couldn't live without.