Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are books, whose very size, intimidates you, and yet, you do have to read it, because your favourite celebrity ever (for me that was Daniel Radcliffe) has read it as early as when he was 16. So, to do away with that feeling of incompetence, you pick up a book like this one and start reading it.

Crime and Punishment, where do I even start? It's long, yes, it seems to go on forever, true; but it is ONE hell of a book you simply can't keep down. While reading it, you're simply not you! You're Raskolnikov, who is full of bitter madness towards a world he sees crumbling before his eyes, full of exploitation, misery and despair. You're Sonia, who is forced to prostitute herself to feed her family and whose only consolation is the Bible. You're the crazy, funny, drunk Razumikhin who finds it easy to fall in love and who suspects nothing.

The best part of the book is how Dostoyevsky is this completely different person who is narrating the story to you and as he does, he has little comments on his own characters and the incidents in the novel, something, that makes you feel he doesn't really always side up with what his characters are doing.

What I loved and what haunts me still about the book is its narration. Seriously, there's nothing MUCH in the story itself! It's just how it has been told. This book, above all others I have ever read, made me feel how powerful and wonderful almost ANYTHING can sound if the narration is right and how there's philosophy and poetry hidden in the most mundane and day to day activities of human life, music hidden in misery and a sweet artistic charm in sadness, too.

A book to die for, Crime and Punishment is something I will HIGHLY recommend!

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