Taking it slowly, chipping away at it, I managed to read Crime & Punishment which I view as being a nice little milestone in my return to reading regularly. It wasn’t always easy and at times I did collapse under the weight of the names, the dense prose etc. But then something amazing would happen that would snap me back into the main narrative which I enjoyed overall. In particular Raskolnikov’s attempts to live with and justify what he did and the ensuing madness. I also enjoyed Dostoevsky’s almost Dickensian assessment of Tsarist Russia; the rampant poverty and complicated societal circles. 

It was not always an easy read, and I could really only dip in and out, but it was ultimately rewarding and left me just marvelling at the invention of Dostoevsky’s deliberate structuring of the novel.