Netochka Nezvanova - A girl's story

[Gladys]

I've just read 'Netochka Nezvanova', the incomplete, first novel of Dostoesvsky. A breath of fresh air, after reading 'Crime and Punishment'.

The scale of 'Netochka Nezvanova' is awesome, with so many never-to-be-answered questions:

• the nature of the magic violin
• the austerity of her mother and emptiness of her father
• the character of B.
• the coming of age of the arrogant Princess Katya
• the return of Prince X. and his wife
• the truth about Pyotr Alexandrovitch
• the great indiscretion of Alexandra Mikhailovna
• the fate of our orphan, with her adopted mother dying

What did others make of it all?

[Quark]

Oh, I enjoyed it a lot. The part before she's abandoned is hilarious, even though it ends tragically. The rest of it appeared to be building to something, but we never get to see exactly what since the story was left unfinished. You did a good job listing some of the unresolved aspects of the story, and I agree that these open-ended questions were quite awesome. I wish we could have seen where Dostoevsky would have taken the novel.