Fionnuala's Reviews > Crime and Punishment

Time and timing were key elements in my reading of Crime and Punishment because real life became particularly busy just after I began the book making reading time particularly scarce, and since it is a novel that demands full attention, the timing couldn't have been more unfortunate, especially as I began to realise quite early on that ideally I would like to have been able to read it at the pace of the story, i.e., in the same amount of days as the narrative covers, days which Dostoyevsky fills almost entirely with thoughts and speech, most often as a series of monologues, keeping the story in some kind of real time, the words and thoughts of the characters counting time like the hands of a clock, even throughout the night, since the main character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov experiences many nightmares which allow us to accompany him even when his eyes are closed, and in any case, his family, friends and acquaintances have a habit of wandering in and out of his room while he is sleeping so that when we are not experiencing his dreams, we are hearing from people who are watching him sleep until he wakes up, when the verbal monologues begin again, though rarely delivered by Raskolnikov who is a reluctant communicator with scarcely more than a page of words escaping his lips during the entire 650 pages of the novel even while his friends and family rabbit on and on, though when there’s no one else about, and especially when he is wandering through Saint Petersburg alone, our Rodion Romanovich talks to himself, and of course to us the readers, so that we are treated to his opinions on everything, and very much in real time, because he focuses on where he is at every moment so that we are there with him, not only party to his thoughts but seeing what he sees, living his dilemmas minute by minute, and when Dostoyevsky pulls one of the surprise stunts with which he brilliantly paces the story, we are pulled up short along with Rodion, our hearts beat faster, the blood drains from our faces, we come out in a cold sweat until we manage to adjust to the new situation shoulder to shoulder with Rodya, and as this happens again and again, we are eventually so conditioned to his world that we are reluctant to leave it when the narrative comes to its inevitable end…