Dostoevsky

March 1, 1986
This is the third in a projected five-volume literary biography of Dostoevsky. The first two volumes ( LJ 9/1/76; 11/15/83) have been widely acclaimed; the present volume, which covers Dostoevsky's return to Petersburg and the resumption of his literary activities following his exile in Siberia, is no less an achievement. It is to Frank's credit that he has analyzed so carefully these formative years, usually neglected by scholars, and produced this gracefully written volume of intellectual history. It is a work of vast erudition and of absorbing interest that can hardly be recommended too highly. Essential for all major collections. Joyce S. Toomre, Russian Research Ctr., Harvard Univ.

Starred review from October 1, 2009
No one could produce a better one-volume biography of Dostoevsky than the author of a much-acclaimed five-volume biography (19762002). In compressing his longer work, Frank tightens the rigor of a narrative that already departed from traditional biography by focusing chiefly on the ideas with which the Russian author wrestled so powerfully, providing the details of his personal life only as background. Thus, for example, while readers do learn of formative incidents during Dostoevskys four years in a czarist prison camp, what they see most clearly is how the prison experience deepened the authors faith in God while dampening his zeal for political reform. In a similar way, Frank limns only briefly the life experiences surrounding the writing of the major novelsCrime and Punishment, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazovdevoting his scrutiny largely to how Dostoevsky develops the ideological tensions within each work. Readers consequently see, for instance, how Napoleonic illusions justify Raskolnikovs bloody crimes, how the Worship of Man dooms Kirillov to suicide, and how deep Christian faith enables Alyosha to resist Ivans corrosive rationalism. Yet while probing Dostoevskys themes, Frank also examines the artistry that gives them imaginative life, highlighting, for example, perspectival techniques that anticipate those of Woolf and Joyce. A masterful abridgement.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)