3 Stars
Lice eats grass, rust eats iron, and lying the soul.
Russian literature and I have a dysfunctional relationship. I think I should like it, have had several friends over the years who adore it, and yet, at some point during a book I want to put myself out of my misery. Whether it's Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, or Chekhov I find a point where I really understand vodka. To be fair, I had a nice Turgenev experience and still need to crack open Gogol, but that will come after a breather because this one took me through my paces.
It's the usual unrelenting bleakness. Here that feeling of being trapped is neatly wrapped up in a youth's rebellion of class structure and the resulting consequences. There's more downs than ups--it's Russian literature, misery is requisite--but after I dragged myself through the extraordinarily long sagging middle, the final 10% was great. Maybe because like a horse on the way home I raced along or the conclusion was just more concise and less mud and cold and uselessness. Either way, a significant character death as offering for my suffering always helps me end on an up note--Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina dragged themselves out of one star territory with this trick. Thus my 2.5 star rating gets pushed to 3, mostly likely due to a sense of relief.
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