Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Hovel Audio, read by Simon Vance, abridged by Thomas R. Beyer)

I normally don't care for abridged versions of books, but this version was a free download from Christianaudio.com.  Since I've never read any of the great Russian novels, as an introduction, it's probably a good thing that this was abridged.  If and when I read the actual book, I'll have a better chance of keeping all the characters straight, and of not getting lost in all the diversions.  Having heard all the Russian names read aloud will no doubt be helpful, too.  This version is 19 1/4 hours long; you can download the full 40-hour version from LibriVox if you'd like.  There are also several online versions of the text, including one in the original Russian, if you're so inclined.

At first even the half-sized version seemed very long and tedious indeed.  By about halfway through, however, I began to look forward to hearing more of the story on my daily walks.  I don't know if it really got more interesting, or if I finally began to sort out the story.  You can tell it was written as a serial, and if he wasn't paid by the word, Dostoevsky sure writes that way.  For all the length, there's little plot and less action, though a great deal of character development and philosophical discussion.  I can't fault that, as this is a trait I treasure in the novels of George MacDonald; perhaps the Scottish character and viewpoint was easier for me to grasp than the Russian.  That the ending is less than satisfactory was explained when I learned that this was Dostoevsky's last novel, and that he had intended it to be only the beginning of a larger (!) story.

Through several hours of listening I was not glad to be hearing the book, only that when done I would at least have some familiarity with this great classic book.  But now I'm interested enough to think I might, someday, read it in its entirety.  Maybe.  Someday.  I have an awfully large backlog of unread books as it is....