Frivolous and artificial, Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights has none of the depth and lucidity we would expect from this author. The short story follows an excitable young man who falls in love with a woman he passes on the street – and it's a cringey, melodramatic love at that. He unloads all his neuroses on this woman and she responds in kind, until she decides to friend-zone him to return to a former lover.

That's it, and there's nothing to sink your teeth into. No deeper merit or theme, nor – considering the melodramatic and artificial nature of the story – any lasting literary pleasantness. The other story included, 'Bobok', is similarly delirious, only more incomprehensible. We're a long way from The Brothers Karamazov here. Readers who want a good, short dose of Dostoevsky would be better served by the far superior The Meek One, also published in Penguin's Little Black Classics series, which contains everything you would have hoped to find here. ( )

Ho aspettato qualche giorno dopo aver finito questo libro prima di buttare giù la mia recensione. Avevo bisogno di raccogliere le idee, di riprendermi dalle forti emozioni che questo libretto riesce a scatenare nel lettore.

Di che cosa si parla? Si parla di un sognatore - uno che vive nei e per i sogni evanescenti - che incontra una ragazza, Nasten'ka, che vive nella realtà e ha il coraggio di soffrire in essa.

Quando i due si incontrano, il sognatore è felicissimo di aver trovato qualcuno in grado di comprenderlo. Infatti, in realtà la sua condizione di sognatore è ben lontana dall'amena felicità che sembra suggerire il sostantivo: il sognatore è un uomo profondamente infelice e solo. Cosa può mai restargli dei suoi sogni? Non hanno un corpo caldo da stringere per quanto siano in grado di suscitare emozioni.

Eppure siamo tutti un po' sognatori. E questa consapevolezza tocca direttamente il lettore nelle sue corde più sensibili. Chi non si è mai commosso, divertito, eccitato, intristito e via dicendo mentre leggeva un libro? Quale lettore è rimasto indifferente di fronte alle storie - ai sogni - messi nero su bianco da qualche autore?

Allora Le notti bianche sembra anche un avvertimento. Attenzione, lettore, a intraprendere la vita del sognatore, guarda cosa accade a viver di sogni: un solo attimo di beatitudine in un mare di solitudine e angoscia. ( )

This volume contains the following:
'White Nights'
'Notes from the Underground'
'A Faint Heart'
'A Christmas Tree and a Wedding'
'Polzunkov'
'A Little Hero'
'Mr. Prohartchin'

I found Notes from the Underground the most difficult and least interesting of these stories. White Nights, A Faint Heart, and A Little Hero were charming and the others were good. Overall I would recommend this as an introduction to Dostoyevsky. ( )

This is a bundle of three stories so I’ll just review each of them seperately. So it starts with ‘a nasty business’ which I actually really enjoyed. It was pretty funny yet also showed how the aristocracy couldn’t really blend in with the normal people. He thought that he was gracing them with hus presence but he just made the poor groom get into debt with his mil and robbed the couple of their first night together. So a bit hypocritical I’d say. For ‘the meek one’ I first of all have to say that my opinion on this story was a but influenced by the age gap between the two. Although it was definitely normalised back then, it just doesn’t feel very comfortable to me, just the way that he talks about her. Besides that, I think it does a pretty good job at showing how someone’s grieving process can be (I’m not a psychologist so I don’t know if this is entirely accurate though). You see that he can’t really accept and process it through the entire story. He also goes through fases of blaming himself, blaming her and simply not understanding what happened. It was also a rather quick read. Now for ‘white nights’, I enjoyed this story a lot, it was really fun to read and it showed the naivety of people. He genuinely thought that she would go with him after three days, but she was just heartbroken and needed someone to tell her story to. The main character was also very lonely so I think that’s why he took every opportunity to have someone to love and to love him. The fact that she leaves him in the end is neither a surprise nor something I expected. It felt like a reality, something that would probably actually happen if that situation were to present itself. ( )

non so nemmeno che cosa ho letto... dialoghi assurdi, personaggi in disperato bisogno di una psicoterapia.