The Brothers Karamazov

936 pages of nineteenth-century Russian fiction . . . but other than a couple hundred pages describing the happenings at the local monastery, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a great read. The jacket copy was quite titillating: "Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder . . ." I was ready for that murder, too, having been a fan of Crime and Punishment. I kept waiting for it . . . 200 pages in, okay now he's set up the story . . . 300 pages in, it has to be just around the corner . . . but it didn't come until about halfway through. And at that point, the book is hard to put down. There's a good soap opera going in the first half, too, with a couple of love triangles. Really, the writers of Grey's Anatomy could learn a thing or two.

I'm not sure what purpose the bit about the monastery serves. I'm sure it's brilliant--perhaps simply to give the novel its moral center, or maybe a commentary on the religious politics of the time. But parts of that section were hard to get through.

Once the murder occurs, though, the story just takes off. We see the police investigation and the courtroom proceedings, all of which is drama-laden. Like in Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has created some vivid and sympathetic characters--despite their foibles. It really is a brilliant novel, and you don't really notice the page count once you get into it.

Now that this giant tome is crossed off the list, I really feel like the end is in site! 23 more to go, but not nearly as long as this one.