Much Ado About Loving by Jack Murnighan & Maura Kelly

Author:Jack Murnighan & Maura Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

Chapter 17

THE BLABBERS KARAMAZOV

The Dangers of Revealing Too Much Too Soon

ACCORDING TO MAURA

If you’ve made it this far into our book, you’ve probably started to notice that I don’t keep too many secrets about my personal life. And while I think that’s a fine thing—kinda necessary, really—for a modern-day essay writer, it sure has hurt my dating life. Probably a lot.

But before I talk any more about TMI, permit me to tell you about a novel that I love dearly: Fyodor Dostoevksy’s tour de force The Brothers Karamazov. Recently, when I lugged it with me to the gym so I could reread it on the StairMaster, one of my fellow exercisers jokingly asked if he could borrow the book to do his arm curls. Hardy har har. It’s true that the novel is so heavy with sentences that it could be used to anchor a small ship. But it doesn’t just sit there like a deadweight. It moves— drawing you in with some of the most vivid, nutty, manic characters in the history of literature, keeping you on the edge of your couch after a murder occurs and the motivations of all the possible suspects are slowly revealed. Admittedly, it’s not till the second half that things really go full-steam ahead. But throughout, the novel keeps you onboard with all its twisting and turning and delightful explorations into the complicated ways in which love and hate, hope and despair, self-destructiveness and the perpetuation of identity can coexist. Sure, it’s about twice as long as Dostoevsky’s next most-celebrated book, Crime and Punishment, but it’s also about ten times as good—with more humor, more action, more emotion, more transformation, more redemption.

Given the title, you won’t be surprised to hear that the book centers around three brothers—and if you’re like me, it’ll be hard for you to decide which one you have the biggest crush on. Is it fresh-faced Alexei, the youngest and most innocent? He’s a monk in training who experiences a crisis of faith when his religious mentor dies; he begins to think he should marry a crippled girl, partly because he’s very fond of her, but mainly because it seems like the right thing to do. Or would you prefer the brilliant intellectual Ivan? The most practical and rational of the three, he’s making a name for himself in the writing world; at times, he comes off as cold and calculating, but he can also be a man of powerful emotions—evidenced by the deep love he feels for a forsaken woman. Or what about their wildly passionate and rather manic half brother, Dmitri? A former soldier given to profligate displays of affection, he’s always wearing his heart on his sleeve—particularly after he falls for a certain young lady with such ferocious abandon that he seems willing to ruin his life for her. Knowing that all three of the boys lost their mothers when they were quite young and that their father is an unparalleled asshole (though he’s also a hilarious and unforgettable creation) will make you feel even more affection for them.

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