Showing 1-3 out of 3 reviews.

• Gripping, fascinating, darkly humourous, totally character-driven - this is vintage Dostoevsky. It didn't take long to read, but I'm pretty sure I'll be re-reading this one at some point. Highly recommended.

  5.00 out of 5

  DLSmithies

• This is called "the eternal husband" but it's told from the point of view of the "eternal bachelor". In fact the novel opens with him, so right away we know it's really his story and not the eternal husband's. The title could be "what the eternal husband did to the eternal bachelor one hot Petersburg summer". (Strange, one doesn't think of St Petersburg as having hot summers...)But boy is this one hot! With tempers and passions, turmoils and paranoias!The eternal husband is that man who is born to be a husband, born to stay by his wife's side, even if she betrays him (which this one does, with our eternal bachelor, among others). (And born to become husband to another, should the first wife be no longer there...)The eternal bachelor is of course the man who never marries.What happens when the wife of the eternal husband dies, and the eternal husband seeks out the eternal bachelor who was once his wife's lover (does he know, or not?)That's our story, and it's a modern one, despite having been written in 1871 (in an introduction Alberto Moravia goes so far as to say that it's a typical 20th century comic novel, -- and therefore ahead of its time --, as opposed to the typical 19th century "pathetic" novel). Who says old novels can't speak to our day? (maybe no one, but I definitely hear talk of needing new forms because we live in a new and different age).There are no cars, no phones, no internet in this book (or forms that speak to those technologies), but it has people, (i.e. us), and people are the same time ever after.

  4.00 out of 5

  donato

• There are many books and plays and movies that describe some 'evolving relationship' between two people. The two people typically go through stages: love, admiration, envy, hate, self-realisation, etc. etc. I wonder if I will ever enjoy those stories again: this book is so superior in this respect I can't imagine how I ever enjoyed e.g. <i>Jane Eyre</i> or <i>Still LIfe</i>. It's true that, when you're reading <i>The Eternal Husband</i>, half the time you have no clear idea why Velchaninov and Trusotsky are saying what they're saying or doing what they're doing. But that's the beauty of it: it all makes itself clear at the end, and all those inferior novels that use some variant of Kubler-Ross stages to frame relationships will never satisfy you again.But Dostoevsky is also amazing when he writes big scenes with lots of people. Think of the scene in <i>The Idiot</i> when everyone is competing for Nastasya Filippovna, or the scene in <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> when Dmitri confronts his father in front of all those people. In <i>The Eternal Husband</i>, the big scene is the party at the Zakhlebinins. Truly wonderful: we almost meet Velchaninov and Trusotsky for the first time as they struggle with each other for attention.My only reservation is that the first few pages, which explain Velchaninov's present state of mind, only make proper sense when you've finished the book. It's worthwhile rereading those pages after the ending.The translation I read (Hugh Aplin) was execrable. Avoid it.

  out of 5

  messpots

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