I just finished the book last night. I found it a bit of a slog, truth to tell, maybe because I found it hard to feel sympathy for Razumov from the beginning. At the same time, what really put me off him - his violence with the drunken peasant - rang true. He was violent because he was terrified of what would happen to him because Haldin had implicated him in the assassination. They lived in a violent and despotic society, and of course that begets violence and injustice at every level of that society.
The oddness of the revolutionists, as Conrad calls them, made them interesting and I was pleased that there didn't seem to be any heroic figures among them.
My only real area of disbelief was at the end, where in order to round out the story of Razumov, Conrad had the revolutionists visiting Razumov when he was back in Russia, so we could learn what happened to him. That seemed to me to be pretty far-fetched.
|