Crime and Punishment review by Josh

I found Crime and Punishment generally boring, and at times barely coherent. Perhaps I’m no longer at a proper point in my life to appreciate Dostoevsky.

Like all of his books Crime & Punishment is a polemic, and like most of what he wrote post 1864 it's a conservative polemic. That said, Dostoevsky is an affable conservative. His characters are typically sad, rather than angry, about the ostensible horrors of liberalism.

What Crime and Punishment lacks is an interesting central character. Raskolnikov is neither likable, like Alyosha K. or Prince Myshkin, nor articulate enough in his evil to be interesting, like the Underground Man, Stavrogin, or Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky.

Dostoevsky is a writer for people who want to be challenged in certain ways. At his best he makes you think seriously about how you want to live. The trouble is that because Raskolnikov is such an unlikable character he is difficult to relate to, or really care about much one way or another.