The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
94 p.

For Decades ‘08.

Giunti Gruppo Editoriale, 2001.
(first published by Longmans, Green & Co 1886.)

Back cover blurb:

It was the cures of mankind… that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling.

I just must say that this edition is so weird. It was bought in Italy, it’s published by an Italian publisher, but still it’s in English and all! It’s crazy. Because of this, I have been completely unable to find the cover. It’s not much to see, really. It’s a picture by Toulouse-Lautrec, which is a little weird, I think.

Me being a human being, I more or less knew what this novella is about. What did not know was the perspective it was told. It is told indirectly, without any real showdown with Jekyll and Hyde. And that was amazing. I didn’t have a clue that it was told in that way. I’ve previously seen the musical version of this story, and perhaps some TV-version as well (I can’t really remember, I see so many strange things), and there it is told very straight-forward. The novella is completely reliant on the suspense that is built up. You know something is strange, but you can’t really see what it is, until just at the end. I suppose that is an element of gothic fiction. In the musical there was women in it (SHOCKING I KNOW), but in the novella, there’s nothing of a kind. In fact, there are very few characters. There’s the narrator, two of his friends, a butler and Jekyll/Hyde. And possibly some other very small roles, as well. It is impressive what an atmosphere Stevenson builds up with only these few characters.

I read this the evening after finishing Assassin’s Apprentice, and if the Forged scared me, it was nothing against how Mr Hyde terrified me. Right, I am very easily scared, but still! Stevenson is more than a little talented. (read, a lot.)

Den unge Werthers lidanden
(Die Leiden des jungen Werther)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
101 p.
(in Litteraturens Klassiker 10)

Almquist & Wiksell, 1969
(first published in 1774)

Back cover blurb:

none

My sister is a big fan of this novel. I can in all honesty not see how she can be. This is the most pretentious, stuck-up shit I have ever read (possibly, at least!). It is not the writing style of Goethe that I have issues with (I am, in fact, quite sympathetic to Goethe on account of reading a couple of nice poems written by him, though this might change a little now), but Werther! Out of all pathetic jerks in the work, one would assume it was impossible to be as stuck-up and pathetic as Werther manages to be. Oh, really - he is so awful that a lot of the time I wanted to throw up. Even when he was happy he complained! Also, some of the opinions he held (such as “suicide is as inevitable as dying from a fever”) made me see red.

I am not going to write anything else, or I will start sputtering all sorts of rude words. And it’s not worth that.

Brott & straff
(Преступление и наказание = Crime & Punishment)
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Hans Björkegren.
325 + 309 p.

Wahlström & Widstrand, 1979.
(first published 1866 in several installments.)

For Decades ‘08 and Russian Reading Challenge.

Back cover blurb:

Brott och straff har kallats “världens mest berömda roman”. Denär också en av världens mest lästa böcker. Den kom ut 1866 och alltsedan dess har hundratals miljoner läsare följt den fattige studenten och mördaren Raskolnikov på hans febervandringar genom Petersburg. Generationer av psykiatriker, religionspsykologer, kriminologer, sociologer och litteraturforskare har hämtat argument och exempel ur denna gastkramande berättelse om en “övermänniskas” väg mot katastrofen. Brott och straff har aldrig förlorat sin aktualitet och gåtfulla spänning. Ännu i dag känns den märkvärdigt levande och modern.

En nyöversättning till svenska har länge varit efterlängtad. Hans Björkegrens tolkning av romanen är genomgripande och har gjorts i samarbete med sovjetiska experter.

After two sentences I was smitten. I must have known I would be this smitten, or I wouldn’t have longed to read it as much I did - I spent a great deal of time last term eagerly waiting for the time for us to come when we were going to read this book. We are not expected to have finished it yet. We are supposed to have begun it come the next Swedish lesson. But I honestly couldn’t wait once we had started talking about it. I plowed through it in five or so days (it probably would have taken less time if I had not been forced to be nice and social to my family) and I loved every moment of it. Who would have thought I would be so intrigued by a poor ex-student turned killer?

The character of Raskolnikov never ceased to amaze me. Of course, the times he gave all of his money to different people I ground my teeth in frustration - why couldn’t he think of himself?! Though, I guess, that’s one of the reasons I found him so fascinating. I couldn’t help but feel for him, despite him killing a person “just because”. He is such an exquisite and chiseled character. In fact, all of the characters feel remarkably alive and real, much more so than anything else I’ve read in the past few months.

Like I mentioned before, this is one of the novels I am studying in school (or will be studying on Tuesday). I know for a fact that many of my friends and classmats will despise this book, because of the simple reason that I think it is so good. Or maybe it’s related to that one of the other Swedish classes have already read it and there seems to be many who despise it there. Hopefully none of the people I know well hate it, but I can’t bet on that. The most tragic thing is that when I will try and defend it all I will be able to say is “BUT IT’S SO GOOD”. They’ll all write me off as a nut who loves it because I study Russian. Actually, this me studying Russian proved a bit of problem when I was reading it. Sometimes I found myself staring at a name, wondering how that is spelled in the cyrillic alphabet, if it had an у or an о, a ю or a ё. Now, my Russian skills are at a very basic level, but let’s admit it: my dream is to one day be good enough at the language to read at least a bit of literature in it. I don’t know if this is the goal of many people studying languages, but else, what’s the point? One day I might reach this goal. Maybe I’ll fail miserably and in five years’ time I will look back at this and laugh at myself, but hey - you can have dreams, can’t you?

There is a BBC serial based on this novel, with John Simm as Raskolnikov. Anyone who have known me for any time the last two months will know that when I watch this, I will explode. And then I’ll be back for more - the next month and a half’s worth of Swedish classes will be full of discussions regarding this book. Yum.

(a couple of notes: a) the cover of the edition is impossible to find. which is a pity, because I quite like it. It’s really plain, but still!
b) The copy I read was my parents’, only because the one I got from school was too ugly. Apart from aesthetics, I have also gained a few other things. It is quite practical to have parents who’ve studied literature at University.)

A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
367 p.

Penguin Popular Classics, 1994
(first published 1859 by Chapman and Hall.)

For Decades ‘08.

Back cover blurb:

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’

Those are the famous lines of Dickens’s stirring tale of two cities, London and paris, at the time of the French Revolution. Suspense gathers from the opening scene, the dramatic coach journey to Dover and the rescue of Dr manette from incarceration in the Bastille. At the centre of the novel are the figures of Sydney Carton and Charles Darna, both men in love with the doctor’s beautiful daughter Lucie, linked together by fate and by the engulfing terrors of revolution.

A Tale of Two Cities was written at a time of crisis in Dickens’s life. It is a wonderful love story and, aside from The Pickwick Papers, the most popular of all Dickens’s novels.

Not counting this novel, I have only ever read one book by Dickens, and that’s Great Expectations. I read that in a strange Swedish translation, and wasn’t much impressed. So, I didn’t expect that much from this book. I have always thought that Dickens is a big bore, and was so very surprised to discover that he was so funny! I was also surprised to be so fascinated by his writing. Given, his sentences are roughly seven lines each, but they are so intricate and exciting that I didn’t care. Sometimes I paused and made myself read certain lines again, just because they were pretty. A lot of the time I skimmed through the longest sentences, but that’s not Dickens’ fault. I honestly enjoyed reading it, which is something I didn’t expect I would be saying.

This book sees the return of the trend of my favourite characters dying. A couple of years ago, I could barely open a book without the most fascinating character dying. And here it comes back! Of course, he survived until, well, a couple of pages before the end, but still. I was very sad; but it was a good sad. It was a good ending, too. A good ending to a good novel. I should read more Dickens.

eta. It was impossible to find the proper cover of the version I read, so I just went with the original title page. It is decent enough.