The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
After having just finished The Brothers Karamazov, I was ready for a long, drawn out story. I was happily surprised to be enjoying the book toward the end. It was an account of life in prison. In that time there were peasants and gentlemen. This was an account from a gentleman and was well balanced. He shared the gritty details, but did not focus on all the bad things. When he spoke of spring and the lifting of spirits as the snow was melting, I couldn’t help feeling the same thing as it’s March and spring is getting underway.
There are defiantly correlations with life, when you feel trapped in or by something. He was able to serve out his time and get released, and that part was well told as he was saying it’s not the freedom you expect and just life.
It was a good book, but I think having read The Brother Karamazov was a good prep to get into the groove of the writer.
This is one of the books in Daria’s Reading List that I’m working on getting through.