The Double

I just finished Dostoevsky's The Double today. It was an interesting, fantastic read, with one of the oddest protagonists I've ever run into. Yakov Petrovitch Goliadkin is a titular councilor living in Saint Petersburg, but he is also a helpless, pitiable wreck, self-absorbed, possibly schizophrenic, confused, self-doubting, hesitant, unable to find a place in the world. Entering his world is like entering a dream state, because it's rather difficult to figure out exactly what's going on in the book. Goliadkin thinks there is a vast conspiratorial web drawing tight around him, but whether that is really so or not is not so clear. He thinks he hears, thinks he's seen, forgets whether he has done something or not, and often receives confused impressions of what is happening to him. In short, it was a rather surreal and confusing book, but nonetheless very interesting. I was glad to find that some critic described the book as "painful, almost intolerable reading." I didn't really find it intolerable, but in some places it was frustrating to try to figure out exactly what was going on--I'm not sure the reader is supposed to, though. At least it suggests I am not alone in finding it difficult to figure out.

I'd recommend it, as long as you don't mind a narrative that is more cerebral than plot-driven, and may leave you confused or at least working hard to understand it many times. A very curious story.