Not my favorite Dostoevsky book by far. I think about half or more of this book, including entire chapters and characters, could have been left out. There are definitely some very good parts, but overall I wasn't impressed. I kept trying to hang in there to be left in awe at the end, but it's very anti-climatic and long-winded and 9 out of every 10 pages are unnecessary. And perhaps it's just this translation, but the characters are often transparent and child-like, always crying, screaming, exclaiming, trembling, going into hysterics and the like, which I found to be distracting from the overall darkness of the novel and not realistic in the least. I'm usually a big fan of FD but I just can't pretend to have really liked this one by the time I finished reading it. I was just glad to be done.