37. Dostoevsky’s Russian Masterpiece: White Nights

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2:13Dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. My heart was full. I wanted to say something, but couldn't. Listen, she continued, taking me by the hand. Tell me, would you have acted like this? Would you have abandoned a girl who came to you on her own? Would you have thrown in her face a shameless jeer at her weak, foolish heart? Would you have looked after her? Would you have understood that she was all alone? That she didn't know how to take care of herself? That she didn't know how to protect herself from loving you? That it wasn't her fault, that finally it wasn't her fault, that she had done nothing. Oh my god, my god.

3:11Nastienka, I cried out finally, unable to control my agitation. Nastienka, you are tearing me apart. You are breaking my heart. You're killing me, Nastienka. I cannot be silent. I must finally speak and tell you what has been welling up here in my heart. As I said this, Nastenka. I cannot be silent. I must finally speak and tell you what has been welling up here in my heart. As I said this, I got up from the bench. She took me by the hand and looked at me in surprise. What is it? So hello, everybody. That was an almost tear-jerking moment from Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story White Nights. It was first published in 1848 in the Russian periodical Notes from the Fatherland in English as translated from Ronald

3:52Mayer and Dominic you tried to get me to say that in the original Russian but as you know I saved my Russian for those who sign up to book club notes from a lover newsletter and also I didn't want to deprive you of the opportunity to show off so would you like to give us the original russian you're not familiar tabby with author chest veneer zirbinsky the brilliant russian periodical well i'm not reading books for this show i'm reading that um surely surely and it's the story of a sad lonely young man played there by dominic who has never known love he's never had a girlfriend he is walking in St Petersburg one day when he comes across a distraught teenage girl and this is Nastenka and over the course of four nights they discuss their lives their dreams their

4:37disappointments and they begin to develop a connection which is totally platonic on her side, we think anyway, and romantic on his. This episode is brought to you by Klarna. When I finish the final chapter, I often find that I have more questions at the end than I started with. What happens next? Why did the story end there? But you know, Tabby, it's hard to make time to ponder big questions like that because I'm always getting bogged down in kind of boring day-to-day admin. But that's where Klarna comes in. Their free app helps you stay on top of your money admin so you have more time to answer the unanswerable. Do you know what? It's even easier now because everything about your money is in one scrollable view.

5:21So what you use most at the top and absolutely nothing slips by. And their app has built in bias protection and day and night assistance so you can feel confident when you shop. Now your everyday spending, your payments and your card are all together and in your control. Download the Klarna app to stay on top of your money so that you can think about, well, anything else. Until very recently, it's certainly not one of Dostoevsky's better known works. It's nowhere near as popular as his later Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov. And it doesn't really touch on the same themes of good and evil there's nothing here about crime or sin of political morality it does have some of his more popular you know alienation is something

6:12that i think he touches on quite a lot but it's unusual i would say for his portfolio it's much more psychological and it's a story about love and loneliness and unrequited love especially and reality and dreams and because of all this I think it's not surprising that he wrote it when he was 26 because it feels like a much much younger man's book written for readers of a similar age you know it has nothing of kind of the haunting existential sophistication of for example crime and crime and punishment, to me, anyway. Yeah, and I think that's the key to its extraordinary success. So as you rightly said, until recently, it wasn't terribly well known. But it has come from nowhere to become this

6:53extraordinary kind of commercial success, which is why I've chosen it for the show. In 2015, our Penguin book started a series called Little Black Classics, which are these very cool kind of little novellas and stuff. And it was to mark Penguin's 80th birthday. And they're very short and they're very kind of affordable. And White Nights was the 118th in this range and it came out in 2016. And it became a hit. Well, it's become a hit in a way the Penguin could not possibly have anticipated. So in 2025, White Nights was the fourth most biggest selling translated book in Britain. As you said, it's translated by Ronald Meyer. It's extraordinary. It really is. It still slightly blows my mind. Yeah, when you think of how many brilliant translated books there are, this is number four.

7:41And the reason is largely because of social media. So this book is massive on booktalk on bookstagram and on goodreads so to give one example there's a bloke who called jack edwards who's the way i would describe him as a gushing book fluencer tabby i don't know if that's a technical term and you say that affectionately of course i do i say that with great admiration and respect he brands himself as the internet's resident librarian. Yeah. And if you watch his clip, as I have, he says White Nights is one of the most devastating books about love I've ever experienced. He says it broke his heart into teeny tiny little pieces. Oh, Dominic, you're wiping away tears of sympathetic kinship there.

8:21I am. It's lovely to see. And his posts about it on Instagram and TikTok have been viewed and liked hundreds of thousands, probably millions of times. Now, Tabby, you're not au fait with this kind of stuff, but I am, fortunately. I'm not really. No, because there's nothing you like more than internet snooping. Completely. That's just so true. That's so true. Anyway, I have read the comments on this bloke's post so that you don't have to. Yeah. So people say of his White Nights posts, this is the single most devastating and beautiful story of all time. This is the story of my life. It broke my heart. I couldn't love this book more. This book broke me. And my favorite, reading this book made me feel more unhappy.

9:04So he's coming from a place of contentment. Exactly. Now, this isn't just a British thing. I want to do some Anglo-Saxon thing. So just last week, there was a piece in newspapers across the world run by the news agency AFP, and it was about the extraordinary global success of White Night. So they focused on Brazil, and Brazil sales of this this book this short story basically have gone up by 500 in a year it's so popular that in rio they had they've run out of copies and they've had to reprint so obviously there's something about it after 180 years that is really speaking to people particularly younger readers and the question is what and well the other question i suppose is this is actually good

9:45now tabby we don't want to give the game away completely no uh but had you read this before and what's your first impression i had not read it before um i read uh crime and punishment two years ago and i have to say that it definitely stayed with me something of a slog for you wasn't it i seem to remember you always say this no i mean you're just traumatized because you were slogging your way through phineas finn at the time well it's your recommendation actually i read no but i read it back to back with money so it was a really weird kind of contrast anyway by marston amos which we're doing soon so i came to this very open-minded i was relieved to see that it wasn't the same length as crime and punishment to be

10:25honest um and i'm obviously not going to give too much away but i would say it instantly felt like dostoevsky was writing this much much younger than when he was writing those later books it didn't have the sophistication of the prose for me yet didn't did it break you that's the question did it break me you know actually shockingly parts of it left me a little bit cold but oh no i'm only saying parts but other parts that i actually thought were um strangely tender actually strangely modern in the depiction of unrequited love yeah um what about you how did you feel about it i'm just thinking if you were posting comments you'd put reading in this book made me feel more even more cold yes even more cold

11:05i know i now have no semblance of human feeling within me uh what did i think well i'd read dostoevsky i've read i've read a lot of the big ones actually crime and punishment brothers karamazov demons i have to say are you i've never i've never you know some people love dostoevsky and they're obsessed by him in fact they're they're positing them in their acolytes. And at this point, they'll be turning off this podcast. They'll say, well, this fool doesn't know what he's talking about. I'd never quite bought into the Dostoevsky mythos. And those big books did actually leave me a bit cold. However, because I'm very easily influenced. So when I watched that gushing bookfluencer. Your brother from another mother.

11:44I thought to myself, well, if he thinks it's good, it must be good. So I was very confident opening this book that I would be converted and I would be wiping away. You know, I'm quite a sentimental reader. That's why I've been trying to sort of figure out why it is that Dostoevsky does nothing for you. I think maybe you do have a little bit possibly of impatience with kind of long passages of passages of emotional exploration me the absence of dialogue maybe or something like that maybe that's why maybe that's why he does nothing for you my term is like i'm going to a therapist or something do i do i i mean i've never been conscious of that personally really well we'll get we're clearly these are murky waters and we're gonna have to

12:20in the second half uh but before then we should talk about the author because he is undoubtedly one of the literary giants the literary greats he's not everybody's cup of tea i think he has a bit of a reputation for being heavy angsty overwrought you know i've slightly noticed he's one of those authors where with the big books the most famous ones people often say oh you should listen to him if you can't face like sitting down and reading him i actually think that's i don't know to me he always seems to have this kind of strangely endearing shambolic calm to him maybe and and i i think i actually do think he's oddly delighted by the kind of comedy of the human condition how sort of i don't know our emotional

13:05intricacies i think there's a degree of truth in that actually that said um another writer that we've done on the show absolutely loathed him and this is your hero this is nabokov he said he is a cheap sensationalist clumsy and vulgar he is less a prophet than a puffed-up journalist and a slapdash comedian apparently he absolutely hated sonia in Crime and Punishment because he said that she was a cliché, you know, she was a cliché of the golden-hearted prostitute type. Really? I can slightly see that, maybe. There are loads of websites where you can look up, they've done a sort of index of Nabokov's views of other writers, particularly Russian writers. Yeah. They are so damning. Basically, there are so few that he likes,

13:44and he'll generally just say of them, rubbish and dull, rubbish, useless. That's like the way that all historians feel about other historians, isn't it? So true. Despite Nabokov's words, he is also regarded, I mean, obviously, as one of the greatest political and moral writers of all time. And as you say, he is very fashionable today for reasons we'll get onto after the break. And this is, of course, and I can't tell you how hard i'm straining not to say this in the voice of david brent he is of course feodor mikhailovich dostoevsky when does david brent talk about that's such an iconic seed in the office when he's showing off to that young guy he says all that stuff in uh siberia you know all that oh

14:23yeah yeah and then every single time and every single time he runs out of um facts about dostoevsky he like sort of like with a pug face disappears anyway so look i digress yeah it sounds a lot like me actually so he's born in moscow in november 1821 and given that he wrote White Nights when he was only 26 we'll only concentrate on his life up to that point and then when you know next year or whatever when we do one of his big books bigger longer books exactly we'll give you the full biography so that's something to look forward to I'm trying to win back the Dostoevsky fans so anyway what's unusual about Dostoevsky so a lot of the big Russian writers of the 19th century, like Tolstoy or Tordjanev, were from

15:08noble families, but he's not. But then I swear that according to the very strict social hierarchies of Tsarist Russia, he technically is, was, yeah, hereditary nobility, but just not elite, like very low down for his grandparents. So basically, the way that it works, you have a bit of Russian heritage, Tabi, no? I do. So you all know this. This will speak to something in your soul. Yeah. There was this kind of very, very intricate table of ranks, the kind of gradations, the hierarchy. And his family were not originally a noble family. His mother's family were merchants and his father's family, I think, tended to go into the church. And his father, Mikhail, was a military doctor who worked at the Mariinsky

15:50Hospital for the Poor, which was on the edge of Moscow. So he's seeing a lot of tragedy kind of from quite a young age, I guess. Totally. Yeah, they lived in a house in the hospital grounds, actually. And Dostoevsky, when he was a little boy, he used to see the patients basically sort of shambling around the gardens. Now, his father was elevated to the nobility. I think as part of the sort of promotion, the sort of incredibly hierarchical Russian system, you would get these promotions and you would get onto the ladder as it were. But because they didn't come from that world, he always said it made a big difference to how he wrote. So he said, basically, writers like Tolstoy, who came from an aristocratic background,

16:23wrote about this sort of fixed world of stability and beauty and tradition whereas he said himself you know I write about accidental families the insulted and the humiliated that's interesting and I think that's that's true because obviously think about crime and punishment or so many of his books he's often writing about people kind of on the margins isn't he yeah definitely um and he like so many of the great authors we do on this show is an enormous reader his nanny introduces him to fairy tales maybe when we do bonus episodes you could take us to your favorite folk tales yeah anyway go on then his mother uses the bible to teach him how to write his parents are very bookish they introduce him

17:00to everything from the iliad and odyssey also very good to hear, to Don Quixote, Walter Scott, as well as Russian writers like Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. The good news is that the family is on their way up because in 1828, when he turns seven, his father is elevated to the very minor nobility. And in 1831, he buys a country estate, for having grown up in the environment that he did this must have been blissful and i think you can see this in dostoevsky's writing often when he talks about the contrast between the city and the countryside anyway um so he and his eight siblings they spend their summers that's a lot that is a lot the bad news is that in 1833 when he's 11 he sent to a little boarding school in Moscow.

17:47His father has to borrow money to pay for it. And Theodore feels miserable and lonely. He feels like an outsider in comparison to his aristocratic classmates. So he's the piggy. He's the Russian piggy of this story. Yeah, so true. More bad news. In 1837, his mother dies of TB. And then in 1838, when he's 16, he enters the Nikolaev Engineering Institute in St. Petersburg because his father wants him to be a military engineer. He does not, but he does as he's told. And he's not really one of life's military engineers, is he? God, no. There's a quote from his friend Konstantin Trutovsky, who was a painter. And Trutovsky who's a painter and trutovsky said there was no student in the entire institution with less of a military bearing than dostoevsky he moved clumsily and jerkily his uniform hung awkwardly on him and his rucksack

18:35and rifle looked like a sort of fetter that he was being forced to wear which hung heavily on him you know if we did like a if we did like a literary i don't know 15 football 15 or whatever tabby you've massively given yourself in a very entertaining way yeah how many people in a football team oh my god okay go on when we do this rugby 15 or football 11 yeah what are you gonna do who do you think would be the captain the captain captain? Yeah. Shakespeare. No, because it's about physical prowess. Oh, okay. Oh, somebody huge. Yeah. Sort of Nabokov, late period. Lampedusa got quite fat. Anyway, sorry, continue. What kind of a boy is he? He's pale. He's delicate. He would not have been in the team because he's kind of a bit of a weed.

19:24He's a kind of introvert. He's a dreamer. He's romantic. It's the popular image of Dostoevsky there, isn't it? It is completely. To be fair to him, he's not bullied. He's not ostracized. He just keeps himself to himself and the other boys call him the monk. I mean, basically, everyone knows somebody like that. Yeah, definitely. But then more tragedy strikes because in the summer of 1839, his father dies, probably of a stroke. But this intriguing me, there were rumours he'd been murdered by his serfs. This is probably untrue, but where did that come from? Was he, did he treat them badly? It was a neighbour or something put this around to try to get the property. Gosh, how Dickensian. Wow. Yeah, it's very Dickensian.

20:00Even so, so Dostoevsky finishes his studies. He qualifies as an engineer cadet and he moves into an apartment in St. Petersburg with a friend. He's now in his early 20s. And one of his brother's friends said he was usually pretty friendly and polite, but, and this is so Dostoevsky-esque, when he wasn't in a good mood, he often looked at everything through dark glasses, became vexed, forgot his manner, and sometimes he completely forgot himself and got carried away to the point of being very abusive. His real passion is for books, and he dreams of becoming a writer. And he starts by translating one of the French writer Balazac's novels into Russian. But he doesn't make much money from it, and he needs cash because basically

20:39he's actually got an extravagant lifestyle. He spends a 50% income on rent. He spends the rest on going to ballets or to plays. He goes gambling at night in St. Petersburg. He goes betting on games of billiards. And he loses tons of money. And so he basically has to ask friends and relatives to help him out. Money's a problem throughout his life, isn't it? Yeah, very much. So in 1844, he decides he's going to write a novel himself. And he says to his brother Mikhail, if this doesn't pay off my debts, I will hang myself. Well, at least he's got a measured approach to things. Yeah, such a Russian mid-century thing to say. Yeah. And this book is his first novel called Poor Folk, published in 1846.

21:21And it's basically letters between two cousins, two poor cousins living in St. Petersburg. So they're talking about their friendships and their love lives and how they're trying to make ends meet and all this. I like the sound of it. No, I think it looks quite dull, actually. Really? I found a copy and I was looking through it and I thought, no, it's not for me. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, I was wrong about A Court of Thorns and Roses. Wouldn't be the first time. So it's a big hit, poor folk. It's one of the great sort of sensations of the day. The top critic in Russia, Vissarion Belinsky, says Dostoevsky is a great star. He's going to be the new Nikolai Gogol. And some of the papers, actually in the newspapers,

21:57they say, wow, this young man's come from nowhere. And he is writing sort of Western-style social novels about poverty and the social question. And that's brilliant. But then straight away, he follows it up a month later with this next book. A month later? So he must have written them sort of simultaneously, I guess. Yeah. And this is a book called The Double and it's much less successful. And this is more psychological, much more Dostoevsky-like, actually. It's about a bloke who's going insane. It's much more Raskolnikov, isn't it? Yeah. And the critics don't like this at all. This meteor has shot up and now it's coming a bloke who's going insane it's much more um raskolnikov isn't it yeah and the critics don't like this at all this meteor has shot up and now it's coming back down

22:29to earth yeah and in more ways than one because by this point his health is suffering he's having these epileptic seizures and in later life they were terrifyingly regular how often he would have these um he's also not massively well liked in literary circles he seems proud vain a bit irritable but then in the next 18 months two big things happen so the first thing most importantly for our purposes is he writes white knights we don't know exactly when but it was approved for publication by the census so these were like government officials who reviewed everything before they got printed to make sure they weren't for instance clever foreshadowing here being negative about the czar so that's approved at the end of october 1848

23:10it's probably written a few months earlier then it's published a few weeks later in the 12th issue of notes from the fatherland yeah what's it called again tabby in russia you remind us beautiful beautiful then the second thing most important for dostoevsky he gets involved Can you remind us? It's your time to shine. Autochestvenie Zabiski. Beautiful, beautiful. Then the second thing, most important for Dostoevsky, he gets involved with a dissident literary discussion group called the Petrushevsky Circle. These are, of course, the final years of Zarnikus I, and he ruled for almost three decades. He is the personification of autocracy, orthodox, very conservative. He won't make any concessions

23:44to liberal reformers. But the petroshevsky circle are keen to discuss utopian and socialist ideas so the abolition of serfdom very dangerous for the czar reforming autocracy you name it then in 1848 to 1849 they come to the attention of the authorities who are understandably very worried about revolutions in Europe and then in April 1849 the group are rounded up and they're arrested and this is the cue for the most famous moment in Dostoevsky's life I mean it's legendary they're all condemned to death they're taken to the square to a square in St. Petersburg on the 23rd of December they're lined up before a firing squad their hands are tied at this point like it seems certain that they are going to get executed.

24:29And then the Damascene moment, a carriage rattles up very dramatically. And a man gets out with a message from the Tsar. They have been reprieved. So their sentence is commuted to exile in a prison camp in Siberia. And this is where Dostoevsky remains for the next four years. And it is a transformative period in his life. This whole incident changes everything for him, really, his perspective on life. He writes this letter to his brother just before he goes to Siberia saying, you know, I can't believe I haven't been appreciating life all this time. Seize the day, etc., etc. Yeah, of course, it would be a massive thing for you. And actually, you can read about this in his book, The Idiot. Prince Mishkin tells the story of a young man saying this

25:12happened. And this is basically Dostoevsky. This is, as you say, like a seismic moment for Dostoevsky. It's still another 10 or 12 years before he writes the big books, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and so on um but those books are clearly much darker more metaphysical more introverted more overwrought more violent than the stuff that he was writing when he was a young man and of course that makes them very different from tiktok's beloved white knights which he wrote when he was young no firing squads there but the big books the books that his admirers really point to today aren't they and he's a word on Dostoevsky before we get into White Nights. I think one reason for his sort of ubiquity, as it were, on book talk and things,

25:51he is very fashionable, as well as being fashionable with sort of quite overwrought youngsters, he's fashionable with a particular kind of very, very online readers. So often, I think, very conservative or libertarian, People who are scornful of kind of Western liberalism. And they see, they love Dostoevsky's existentialism. His kind of slight infatuation with suffering as well. Yes, exactly. So three examples. Elon Musk. Elon Musk has tweeted about the Brothers Karamazov. He's definitely never read it, like The Odyssey, which he also had not read. So he approved of a tweeter who said, oh, you'll learn more about human psychology from the Brothers Karamazov than with any number of kind of psychology

26:32books. Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson loves Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, they're two of his top three books. And Peter Thiel, the chairman of Palantir, he gave an interview the wall street journal in which he said there was no better way to think about human irrationality than to read dostoevsky and you can see why they like him they like him in part because of his rejection of kind of liberalism because dostoevsky went on this political journey in which he ultimately became a kind of russian ultra nationalist super committed to r Russian orthodoxy. And he wrote of his deep personal revulsion from Western liberal values. So he unites two quite different constituencies, I think.

27:13So people who feel very sad and people who, you know, looking forward to sort of, I don't know, the world in which the kind of, you know, the great tech giants rule everything and sort of weedy liberalism is completely obliterated. That seems to me a slight misreading, but... By me or by them? By them. Never you. Ah, thanks. What's worth stressing here, though, is that this is not the Dostoevsky of white knights, is it? No, no, no, not at all. Because, I mean, if you've come to this book for great existential themes of you know good and evil suffering and cruelty what is man yeah all of that you're not going to get it in white nights yeah but what are you going to get in white nights yeah well exactly so let's

27:55get into the book so remember this is a book written by a young man in dostoevsky who's only 26 he's short of money he's socially awkward He spends loads of time in his own head. He's something of a romantic dreamer and definitely indulges, I think, that side of himself. He doesn't really know where he fits in. And this is all true of the narrator of White Nights. The setting is St. Petersburg, which is the capital of the Russian Empire at this time. It's never described in the book, but it's powerfully evoked. It's a mood rather than a place. It's kind of abandoned and a bit desolate. Canals, empty streets, this atmosphere of melancholy. It's not as dilapidated as the city in Crime and Punishment.

28:33Bearer, I would say. Emptier. And the White Knights of the title, I love this detail. I did not know this. They're an annual St. Petersburg institution. It's a natural phenomenon where for about 80 days in june and early july the sun never sets so it's this perpetual gentle dusk or twilight that lasts all night and it kind of lends it this dreamy unreal feel you've you've seen this before haven't you i have i saw it and not in well i have been to spitzberg i didn't see it when i was there but in um in northern norway tubby so the lafoten islands which is very beautiful you you get there and it's sort of yeah so strange the sun never sets so you know the evening proceeds and you know you get to that point where it's sort of seven o'clock or eight o'clock and then it just

29:20sort of stops and the light fades a little bit and it becomes very soft. But all through the night, you've got this kind of soft twilight. I mean, it's lovely. It's a really remarkable thing. It's quite hard to sleep. I mean, that's the difficulty. But no, it's... Terribly romantic. Yeah. But the opening of the whole book definitely sets the tone. So it was a wonderful night. The kind of night, dear reader. By the the way i think this is really beautiful writing it was a wonderful night the kind of night dear reader which is only possible when we are young the sky was so starry it was such a bright night that looking at it you could not help but ask yourself is it really possible for bad-tempered and capricious people to live under such a sky that is also a young

30:01person's question dear reader a very young person's question but may the lord ask it of your heart more often i think that's lovely like that i do i do like that and this all seems brilliant but actually yeah this is as positive as the book really gets this is this is the last bit of joy in the heights of optimism because the narrator then goes on to say that from early that morning he's woken up with a terrible melancholy and it's tormenting him and he says it suddenly seemed that i so alone was being abandoned by everyone that everyone was deserting me oh poor fella so i think this is actually reading this i was struck by i think it's quite retro in some ways so in 1848 looking at the what else was going on in literature, it's

30:45Wuthering Heights, it's Jane Eyre, so two books that we've done on the show. Thackeray was writing Vanity Fair, or had written Vanity Fair, I can't remember which. Dickens is just about to start David Copperfield. So these are books that are overflowing with energy. And this is more sentimental. It's more melanch and it's quite in that sense i think it's quite backward looking it's looking back to sort of 18th century books about sort of love-lorn sentimental narrators and things not that popular anymore by this point this kind of heightened melodramatic language yeah i think feels quite i think exactly i think it feels quite i think it feels quite retro anyway the narrator i mean you as you described him, I think rightly, he's the astonishing melancholy.

31:28I mean, he's basically melancholy in human form. He is, dare I say, if I was going to be harsh, is he a bit of a drip, Tabby? I think he is a little bit of a drip, but I think that is a tiny bit harsh. He definitely does that thing, which I think surely everyone knows someone who does this. Yeah. thing which i think we surely everyone knows someone who does this yeah where it's like you are enamored of the version of yourself that is miserable and a bit blue and a bit you don't actually try to to shake it off because it's it's kind of artistically artistic and romantic it's kind of like the romantic you know paintings of ophelia or something you know everybody knows somebody like this so yeah this bloke this narrator he describes himself as a type at one

32:05point when he's talking to um the other main character and he's dead right he is a type he's a bit eccentric he's a dreamer he spends all his time basically mooning around and brooding so he's melancholy he goes out to out to the fields doesn't he like you yeah though the vibe is very different he hasn't been drinking champagne He feels that the burden needs to be lifted from his soul, which is, as is very common with Russian writing in the mid-19th century, he thinks that the countryside is brilliant and nature and the real Russia, and he's leaving the city behind. His metaphor for the city actually foreshadows his main interest in the book. He says that St. Petersburg is a weak and sickly girl but when spring comes she becomes inexplicably wonderfully beautiful so you ask

32:52what power caused these sad thoughtful eyes to shine with such fire what summoned the blood to these pale sunken cheeks what has suffused these tender features of her face with passion and this basically this idea of this sort of very miserable person who is suddenly lit up by romantic passion i mean that's basically one of the themes of the book isn't it definitely he comes back from the countryside and he's walking along the canal and he sees this young woman crying and she's wearing a lovely yellow hat and a sort of black mantilla kind of shawl or something like in the master and the margarita do you know i've never read that i've never it's our most requested book the master margarita but i've never read it i think we're definitely doing next year she has yellow flowers so then

33:33i wondered when i read this if that was kind of a nod to this yeah well this book is itself nodding to lots of previous books because he thinks to himself i would call out to this woman who's crying but for the fact that i knew i would call to her madam but for the fact that i knew that this exclamation had already been uttered a thousand times in all our russian society novels so in other words he's a massive reader he's very self-aware and there's a sense i think that both he and the girl are playing they've done a lot of reading and they're playing parts they are they are sort of playing parts that they've learned from reading a lot of sentimental romantic books what part are you playing tabby just out of interest i don't i feel like maybe like the

34:15cynical aunt in an oscar wilde play something like that what was that character you played no i played the femme fatale i played mrs cheeveley mrs cheeveley where you put on that uh upper class accent yeah different from your own honestly i had to go method i really did to get brilliant to bring that back up on the show yeah exactly so anyway uh i'm playing full staff just so we're clear so no you're not so you're lady macbeth if anything oh i'll take it. I'll definitely take it. Fair enough. A drunken man on the other side of the road accosts this woman. And so our narrator rushes to her aid. And he rushes across the street and he says, take my hand. She takes his hand and she's trembling from nervousness and fright, he says.

35:02And he is struck by how pretty she is. And that is the point at which she says to him, why are you trembling too? Oh my God. That is so unbelievably exciting and romantic. Why is he trembling? What's he going to say? Who is she? Why is she crying? Will they fall in love? Will she save him from his isolation, like Natasha to Prince Andre? Will they end up together? Will she save him from his isolation like Natasha to Prince Andre? Will they end up together? Is White Nights any good? Discover after the break. comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admiral's Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high

35:49speed Wi-Fi sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com. Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no We'll be right back. All their delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavours with the quality you want. Only at Whole Foods Market. Hi everyone, it is Tabby here. We love hearing all your opinions about the books that we've been doing on the show. And I know loads of you have sent thoughts and comments and reviews of your own. You've emailed us, you've left comments under episodes on Spotify or on YouTube or whatever. And we love reading them, don't we,

36:50Tabby? We do. And we know that you've heard us do a lot of book reviews, but how would you like to hear us dissect your book reviews or answer some of the unanswered questions you may have about various authors, various books, the historical periods that they're born of, everything that we've covered on the show, or explore new books, books that we haven't covered on the show, suggested by you, our beloved listeners. So we've had so many suggestions and so much feedback that we thought it was time to launch a bit of an interactive event. So we always like to give our listeners a little bit extra. So we have decided to put on, and I know Tabitha, you're very excited about this, our first ever virtual book club. So this is basically a live online event. We are going to

37:39be live on YouTube at six o'clock British time. So that's six o'clock on the 20th of October, which is a Tuesday. So on Tuesday, the 20th of October, six o'clock British time on YouTube, we'll be discussing your thoughts about the books that we have covered. We will be taking questions from listeners. We will be reacting to your bracing opinions live on air. So that is very exciting. You know what it's like, Tabby? It's like a book club. That's what it's like. It is a lot like a book club. So to get the link and join us at 6pm UK time on Tuesday, the 20th of October, all you have to do is sign up to our newsletter, Book Club Notes. I'm pretty sure that if you listen to the show, you've heard us bang on about it. And you can do this by going to thebookclubhq.com. That is

38:31thebookclubhq.com to join us for our very first live stream on Tuesday, the 20th of October. We'll see you on Tuesday. Bye-bye. welcome back to the book club now listener are you lonely and sad would you like to read something every saturday that takes you by the hand gives you a real sense of personal connection and shines a ray of sunlight into your otherwise drab and totally meaningless life if so sign up to our amazing newsletter book club notes at thebookclubhq.com. It's totally free. You get exciting reader feedback. You get advanced warning of what's coming up. You might even get my Russian on full display. Wow. If that doesn't tempt and tantalize you, I don't know what will. Now, back to the story.

39:21Yeah. I cannot wait to see what happens next. We know that the girl with the yellow hat has asked this man why are you trembling yeah what's the answer why is he trembling what's going on so um he says to her i'm timid i'm nervous with women i won't deny it it's like a dream but even in my dreams i never guessed that i would ever talk with a woman. So this guy, he's basically a total incel, isn't he? No, he's not an incel. Tabby, he is. He doesn't hate women. He's just scared of them. He's a more benevolent incel. He's frightened of women. He's just shy and too romantic, I suppose. If you have a very romantic idea of love based on books, immense pressure. I mean, it's nice that you're so sympathetic towards him.

40:10So he's 26 years old. He says, I've never had a single woman acquaintance. All I dream of every day is that long last I will meet someone. Oh, if only you knew how many times I've fallen in love like that. Now, this is a bit odd. You're like, fallen in love? With whom? And this is what the girl says to him. And he says, why would nobody with an ideal? I create entire love stories in my dreams. And this is obviously this big theme of the book. He says, I'm a dreamer. I have so little real life that I regard moments like this to be so rare that I repeat these moments in my dreams. And then he says to this woman, I will dream of you all night for an entire week all year long. Now, some people, I'm interested in what you make of this, Tabby.

40:56My instinct is that that's a tiny bit creepy, but you're probably going to tell me that that is really touching and romantic. I think that's a bit cynical. I think it's a little bit sad. It's a tiny bit pathetic. I'm a big fan of The Long Game. Right. But, I mean, on principle, it's a lovely thing. Like, so many movies, popular culture is dedicated to the concept of love at first sight. So it's a nice concept. I curl my lip a tiny bit at how effusive he is and how he's so not playing hard to get but it's definitely i feel a bit sympathetic towards him and i'm pretty sure that if someone came up and said that to me i'd be flattered my vanity would be charmed genuinely if someone said i'm gonna dream of you every night for a year kids well i i would still think oh gosh

41:42that's quite sweet and also like i can't I feel like I can't be a hypocrite. I can't in one breath really love other instances where this occurs in other books, like in The Master and the Margarita again, where their eyes lock on the street and she has yellow flowers and then turn my nose up at this. Okay. See what I mean? Fair enough. Well, anyway, he says, I'm going to come tomorrow without fail to the same spot and I will be happy as I recall what happened yesterday this place is really dear to me and she actually like you she loves this she's thrilled by it she's touched by it i see through her i like her i relate to her but i see i see through her she's a monster of vanity she says i'll come and see you tomorrow i I'll come and meet you again, but on one condition.

42:27And this is important. She says, don't fall in love with me. I am prepared to be your friend. But falling in love. Yeah, that's a bit cocky. But falling in love with me is impossible, I beg you. And he swears. He says, I won't fall in love with you. She says, great. I've got something to tell you and I'll confide in you tomorrow. You know, presumably about what she's crying and stuff. And then she says, from the distance, it will look like a love story. So that's something to look forward to. And they part and they're going to meet again the same time tomorrow. So that's the first. The story is basically broken into these four nights. Four nights, yeah. So that is the first of the four nights.

43:00So Tabby, at this point in the book, is your attitude um this is all a bit weird or that this is a lovely romantic story there's going to be some fun secrets and you feel a real sense of connection to both of these people i think the combination of both those things i do i i was already so he was starting to grate on me a little bit but but i was still intrigued i wanted to know where she came from what was going on and i did think oh are they going to fall in love okay so do you want to take us to night number two yeah this brings us to the second night so they meet he's been waiting for her for two hours already bit keen but then again i always arrive to dates late so who knows performatively yeah always so that's just cheap that's just

43:41good form right anyway she tells him her name and it is nastenka and he then gives her a long description of his life as a dreamer he really likes the idea of himself as kind of romantically above the humdrum world below you know lost in fairyland um he says he's kind of a sexless being i feel like that's a bad thing to say yeah if you're if you're trying to woo don't leave with that and he says that when acquaintances come to visit they never come again because they're shocked by his eccentric oddball nature a little bit creepier by this point i would say but can't knock him for his honesty she asks why but she also says you talk as if you were reading from a book so again it's this sense that he's he's copying a literary model it's so self-consciously literary and he now starts telling

44:31his story in the third person so referring to himself as he him so he says the goddess of fantasy has spun him patterns of a fantastic marvelous life transporting him to the seventh crystal heaven from the excellent granite sidewalk on which he was walking home when he breaks off some fantasy it had grown dark in the room. His heart feels empty and forlorn. Basically, the kingdom of dreams have collapsed around him. He has to come back to reality and he doesn't like it there. Then he's back in the fantasy. His imagination is once again excited and suddenly a new world, a new enchanting life with its glistening vistas flashes before him. A new dream is new happiness. A new dose of exquisite, voluptuous poison.

45:06Oh, what does real life have to offer him? I like that. I think that's a gorgeous little passage. And when he's daydreaming, whole sleepless nights pass by like a single instant, in inexhaustible merriment and happiness. And when dawn breaks, he falls asleep, his tormented and overwhelmed spirit trembling with ecstasy, while his heart aches with a sweet agony. God, it is so overwrought though, isn't it? It's very overwrought. I mean, to be fair, you take refuge in your daydreams and your fantasies and then you realise, you know, you return to the real world, you've got to put the bin out. Yeah, exactly. You don't actually get to exist in Middle Earth, you just have to talk about it. Exactly.

45:41This is my favourite section of the book. Yeah, me too. When he's talking about the dreams and it's the most evocative and it feels the most personal this reminds me of the film inception so leonardo dicaprio marianne cottier have created this dream world and they go and explore the dream and they spend longer and longer in the dream and reality loses its appeal to them and the dreamer in in white nights describes how he and this imaginary lover they spend years of their lives together hand in hand alone just the two of them having forsaken the world and each uniting their life their world with the life of their friend and he imagines them walking in these empty cheerless desolate gardens with paths overgrown

46:24with moss secluded and gloomy, where they would so often walk together, where they loved, hoped, grieved, loved each other for such a long time, so long and tenderly. And that, I mean, there are scenes that are very like that, actually, in Inception, where it's like Leonardo and Marion Cotillard have grown old together in this world, that it's just a dream. And then when they come back to reality... Well,'t she can't exactly exactly the one difference i would say is that in white nights i do think some of the dreamers dreams feel a little bit like he's got a big book of romantic cliches and he's kind of dipping into it i just kind of thought it was was, you know, Dostoevsky grew up with fairy tales. I thought

47:06this sounded like fairy tales that I grew up with and I liked that. So there's a bit where he and this dream woman, they've been parted for so long and they're reunited in a palazzo in Rome on a balcony. They're both wearing masks, a mask ball. She takes the mask off. They recognize each other. They throw each other into you know they throw themselves into each other's arms they cries of rapture all this kind of thing now to me i have to say this bit what it reminded me most was not inception it was the work of our old friend sarah j mass that is a mad comparison the mask stabby don't they wear masks because that's based on a fairy tale as well well there you go there's common roots of two great works of literature anyway can't believe you just compared dostoevsky

47:51to sarah g maas so um you can see i think why all this is so strikes such a chord with readers today because of course the opportunities to lose yourself in a fantasy world are greater than ever before you can be playing video games you can be you know watching videos you can be talking to ai you can be you know basically taking refuge in a virtual reality rather than experiencing the humdrum disappointments of the real one and actually dostoevsky anticipates all the the modern criticisms of those things so actually his narrator at one point has a remark that does feel like it comes from Inception. He says, I feel like I cannot begin my life in real life because I've lost all touch. I've lost all instinct for the actual, the real.

48:35Yeah, that is, you know, Inception when they go down to that cellar in Mombasa or something, and there are all those people that live their lives perpetually in a state of dreaming. That's what our dreamer in White Nights is in danger of doing. And the girl is shocked, isn't she? She thinks, how can you be living like this? Yeah. But, he says, now I know more than ever that I've wasted all my best years for nothing. So he acknowledges it. He realises what real life is. And this is all, you know, awoken in him by this connection that he has with nastenka with meeting her i can now say that i have lived at least two evenings in my life to be fair you know i actually do think that there are parts of this book that strike me as incredibly modern or

49:15um continually relatable and there is something in that you know i you know when you really fall in love or something with someone i remember i I went off, I started going off, you know, romantic movies and stuff. They just didn't do anything for me anymore. So you can slightly see what he's saying. Oh, that's a nice confession. Oh, exactly. I thought I'd be mocked for it, and I was. You weren't, you haven't been mocked, have you? I said it was a nice confession. Oh, thanks. So he realizes how cheerless and monotonously banal is the timorous fantasy, the slave of a shadow of an idea. He's going to grow old. Your fantastic world will grow pale. Your dreams will wither, die and scatter like yellow leaves from the trees.

49:55So he realizes that he's going to be left alone without even regret because all that I have lost, all this, it was all nothing, a stupid round zero. It was merely a dream. I actually think this is the whole message of the novel. This is what Dostoevsky is kind of trying to say. It's not that to be a dreamer is fantastic and it's not romanticizing that. It's saying, you know, the opposite. Like, you have to live in the real world. This massively reminds me of a moment when, in my brief academic career as a university lecturer i once spent like about five days we had like a bank holiday weekend and i literally as soon as i got back from work i thought brilliant this is my chance to really get stuck into football manager

50:36that is a sad confession and i probably played it for like three days solid with occasional breaks for sleep or for like to order pizzas or something and on day three i was absolutely beside myself with joy i'd taken i don't know shrewsbury town to the champions league or something oh i'd won it and i had to go out and buy some milk and i remember going down like to the corner shop did you have like did you have like crisps like stuck to your cheek? No, I was on cloud nine. I was delighted. I was so happy. And then I got into the corner shop and I was buying the milk and I had a sudden crushing moment of realization that it wasn't real. Because I'd kind of wondered why people weren't looking at me with more respect.

51:18Like clapping you down the street. Exactly. And then I was like, oh my God, it's all for nothing. I could delete the saved game now and it would disappear. It't real and no one would care no one knows there'd never be a headline exactly so anyway nastenka is probably more clear-sighted than i was because she says to this guy well at this point she says stop stop you know moaning and groaning stop worrying about how you don't have a life because you have us our friendship now is unbreakable whatever happens to me we will never part i mean to be fair they've only been together like two nights a lot of eagerness on both sides very much and she actually now says i'm going to tell you my story and i need your advice and then the maddest line of the whole book she says i need

52:00your advice you're a very sensible man he's just exposed himself yeah as a man of no sense whatsoever who knows nothing of the world why would you ask him for advice of all people she just wants comfort you know she's using him for just the sake that he's there you know i know but then but then but then she starts telling her story i actually like this bit and this genuinely has the maddest detail of the whole book okay so she's only 17 she starts telling her story. I actually like this bit. And this genuinely has the maddest detail of the whole book. Okay, go for it. So she's only 17. She lives with her very controlling grandmother who's blind and is so controlling and is so, you know, determined not to see Nastenka go off with another man that she literally attaches

52:37herself to her granddaughter with a safety pin. She safety pins their dresses together. She does. That is mental. So another profound insight here so the blindness of the grandmother anticipates nastinka's blindness as to the narrator's feelings that is a good insight where where did you pick up that insight just to be clear it was all up here is it you definitely didn't hear it from me original cyrit yeah fine yeah so um they then take in a lodger who's a young man and he reads french translations of walter scott and alexander pushkin that's tinker's grandmother is worried about the books because she says they describe how young men lead well-behaved girls astray under the pretense of wanting to marry them etc etc you know and this is this is the fate that she is

53:21concerned will befall nastenka she says i've read a lot of books like that and everything is so wonderfully described that you sit up all night quietly reading. So you, Nastenka, see that you don't read them. It's a long running fear, isn't it? That women will read novels and be corrupted by them. Totally. It goes back to the 18th century. It's self-conscious again, though, isn't it? Yes, it is. So the lodger wants to take them out to see the Barber of Seville and Nastenka is transported by it. She says, my heart was pounding, so I became slightly feverish. I think that's interesting because in a way, her experience of art and whatever, literature or whatever it may be, for the theatre, it kind of brings her to life.

53:56It awakens her to the power of the real world, whereas it does the opposite for the dreamer. It puts him to sleep. Inevitably, the lodger and Nastenka fall in love and they make a deal i think i wondered though actually is how much of this love is born of her desire to escape you know she's kind of using him to escape but so they make this deal that when he goes back to moscow he'll spend a year there studying then when he comes back they'll meet after exactly a year at exactly 10 p.m at this spot you know again that's um self-consciously romantic there's something in the fairy tales whatever in that so this all sounds lovely but there's a shock and development isn't there yeah so she knows he's been back in some beats by for three days but he hasn't turned

54:35up he hasn't written to her he's ghosted her he has ghosted her and nastenka at this point starts sobbing and sobbing and sobbing oh i felt for her and so our narrator our dreamer he feels heartbroken to see her sobbing and she then says to him i wonder if you could write a letter for me i can't do it and he's like well yeah i can see how that would work i'd probably write this and she says brilliant because actually i have written the letter i know you sneer at this but i guess it's a bit like you know oh should i should i text that that that guy i had a really good date with but he hasn't texted me and then you and then you say to your friend like i don't know like do you think i should text or would that be like really weird

55:12and then your friend's like oh no great idea and then you're like oh that's fine i've already done it you know i like how when you talk to your back when you're ventriloquizing how you talk to your friend you've adopted a sort of i know i'm like paris hilton weird yeah sort of anglicized valley girl voice is that how you talk to yeah no strange i think i think it is i think this voice is just put on so this brings us to the third night okay he's now looking back from the day after and he is more depressed than ever he says today was a sad rainy day without a ray of hope just like my future old age so he's slightly ticking the every i'm miserable box there yeah um and this is him looking back on night three so at first he was so happy

55:51some really lovely nine lines about falling in love you want to pour out all your heart into another's heart you want everything to be gay laughter everywhere and how infectious is this joy i think that is so nicely observed you know it's like a feeling when you get a text or something you're like the world is bright and shining um and then he reflects on how she flattered him made his heart sing etc but how could I have been so blind so blind to what oh dear what's going on and when they met that third night she was giddy with excitement laughing everything and there's this kind of tragically ironic moment she says do you know why i'm so happy so happy to look at you why i love you so today gosh she

56:30really is leading him on um and he says well i asked and my heart began to tremble i love you because you didn't fall in love with me why someone else in your place would have started bothering me pestering me sighing falling. But you're such a dear. I've never read such an obvious friend zone in my life. Friend zone? I don't even know what that means. You've never heard of friend zoning? No. Oh, my God. Crikey. What is it? Catch up, bro. You know, your friend fancies you. Yeah. And then you just say things to them all the time like what would i do without you you're such a good friend and the friend is actually like dying inside because i love you you know yeah exactly exactly but it's a very standard this is a very

57:15standard situation in literature unrequited love is this kind of romanticized it's considered almost the the highest form of love isn't it yeah it's a it's a theme of so many, so many great books. I actually felt very, very sorry for the narrator in that moment. Well, she is torturing this guy. Yeah, she is torturing him. She's saying to him, what a friend you are. You're so unselfish. It's because she doesn't want to be alone. She needs him and he comforts her. And, you know, she'd sort of rather have him than no one i suppose i wonder if she's almost willfully being blind here maybe i'm being too cynical i think she is a little bit i think she is a little bit it's not like you know natasha and pierre or whatever where it's like

57:54genuinely she doesn't have a clue and the reader doesn't really know i think in this it's pretty clear yeah she says to him you love me so when we're married we'll be great friends i will love you almost as much as i love him yeah and then the narrator narrator is clearly desperate for her to stop talking but she just keeps going i want him to see that we love each other and all this and he actually thinks how blind you are nastenka he finds it um unbearable and he starts babbling to her he starts witteringing about how when he woke up, it was as though a musical melody, that familiar musical melody was coming back to him. It seemed to me that all my life it had been begging to be released from my soul.

58:35And obviously what he's doing here is he's slightly trying to, is he going to gear up to tell her the truth that he's fallen in love with her? And the stanker just says, I don't understand a word of what you're saying and then to absolutely rub salt in the wounds she says she says to him i'm a bit disappointed that you didn't fall in love with me but you know it's that thing of you know young people where it's like the marrying of ego and love and stuff is never good it results in great cruelty. And she is being very, very cruel here. Exactly. And then the bell tolls 11 and she can't understand why her lover hasn't come. And the narrator rather sweetly starts making excuses for him. And she thanks him.

59:16She says, you're so kind. Do you know what just occurred to me? I was comparing the two of you. She says, why isn't he you? Why isn't he like you? He's not as good as you even though i love him more than you so brutal um and this must be unbelievably gutting for the narrator although you know come to think of it maybe she just genuinely is very naive and she's young and she's been very sheltered and you know she doesn't have she's never had a friend um so he's clearly not going to come today she puts a brave face on it says the narrator now we'll always be together but will they yeah has she grown has is it friends to lovers is the you know is it colonel brandon and marianne you know yeah is it all gonna come good and this

59:57brings us to the to the fourth night he arrives at nine she's already there for a change there's been no letter and she's devastated. As you would be. And then there's another ironic moment. This is what we performed so beautifully in our introduction. Do you think that introduction was quite capturing the... The tragedy of this moment? Possibly not. Now that we've got really into this, I feel like we were dialing it in. I don't think it was... Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, listener. I'm so sorry. And she says, tell me, would you have acted like this? Would you have abandoned a girl who came to you on her own? Would you have looked after her? Oh, my God, my God. Yeah. And this is the moment, the climax.

1:00:35He cracks. It's the moment we've been waiting for since the beginning of the story. Tense with anticipation. This is when he says, now stink and the stink. You're tearing me apart. You're breaking my heart. You're killing me. Anakin! Anakin, you're breaking my heart. Mental. Your favorite film. Literally your favorite film. I must finally speak and tell you what's been welling up here in my heart. And she says, well, what's going on? And then he says, it's impossible. I love you, Nastinka. That's what it is. Well, now everything has been said and they're both in a massive state at this point i i actually found this quite moving did you yeah both crying at each other's pain it's sort of quite like sort of um tender she's

1:01:17sobbing because she was so blind he's just an absolute mess she says actually do you know what now that i think about it maybe my love for the other bloke will pass yeah maybe it was just a passing thing maybe you could take pity on me take my hand maybe i'll try to i'll try to love you uh yeah i will actually try to love you and maybe we can make a go of this yeah now he at this point he's played a blinder he's so pleased he's pink with glee tabby they're both pink with glee pink with glee a glow with pleasure um and now a big spoiler for those who have not read the story if you are if you are hooked by this yeah and you are thinking i've got to read this i can't stop here yeah go no further so they're walking along they're literally it's such a romantic scene

1:02:01they're looking at the clouds and the moon. It's the process of falling. Pierre and Natasha at last. And then Nastinka, she sees a young man who passes them. And this is a terrible moment or a wonderful moment for team Nastinka, but a terrible moment for the narrator. His heart quivers and we know what's coming. Nastinka, I said in a hushed voice. Who is that Nastinka? It's him. So it's her lover come for her at last. She ruthlessly runs to the other man. She embraces him, then runs back to the narrator, kisses him firmly, ardently, then runs back to the other man and goes off with him and that's it and it's a devastating moment but i have to say i think it doesn't come as a complete shock because i would say that we

1:02:52have both we know this is coming pretty far back we you surely know this is coming yeah i mean it's not going to be they walk off into the sunset and they set up well they were chatting about how they set up a school or something or he was going to write or he's too fleshless the narrator he just he's too limpid i don't know he couldn't be the heroic winner of any story i think so then we get to the final scene it's morning it's raining unsurprisingly it's a dreadful day the rain beat down on my windows cheerlessly it was dark in the room it was overcast outside so the narrator being his usual jolly self yeah he would be gutted though after a night like that wouldn't you this would be a roller coaster there's no doubt about that it's been an emotional roller coaster and the

1:03:35letter comes from nastinka she asks him to forgive her so that's nice he'll always be her friend and her brother oof painfully fraternal that yeah but she's going to marry the other bloke next week. And she thanks him for loving her. I think that's quite sweet. She doesn't invite him to the wedding though. No. She says, it is stamped on my memory like a sweet dream that you remember long after waking up because I will forever remember that moment when you opened up your heart to me like a brother, not like a brother, and so generously accepted the gift of my shattered heart to protect cherish and heal it so that's quite sweet but isn't that a nice touch that he's been talking all through the story about how he took refuge in dreams and he needed to kind of wake up

1:04:16and get back into the real world and this was the one moment in his life when he was most real when he when he woke up when he woke up and he wanted to have this human connection. And for Nastenka, it's just been a sweet dream. So for her, it's been the dream. Yeah, White Nights, it's been in this strange, ethereal twilight zone kind of thing. Yeah. Whereas for him, it's the reality, you know? It's really, really sad, actually. I actually think it's a really nice little passage. I totally agree with you, actually. I think it's really really sad actually i think i actually think it's a really like nice little um passage i totally agree with you actually i think it's very nicely observed um and i think it captures the how in matters of the heart like this what's incredibly real

1:04:57and meaningful for one person can actually just be a passing fancy yeah a fairy tale dream for somebody else he's sobbing isn't he's gutted uh by this. He's sobbing, isn't he? He's gutted by this news. He's a decent fellow, though. He doesn't want to ruin things for her. He doesn't want to begrudge her happy ending. He thinks of her and he thinks, may your sky be clear, may your sweet smile be bright and serene, may you be blessed for the moment of bliss and happiness that you gave to another lonely, grateful heart. Yeah, he's generous. He doesn't begrudge. He's not angry's not bitter gotta respect that and the final line which people on tiktok can't get enough of he says my god a whole minute of bliss is that really so little for the whole of a man's life

1:05:38that's all i need just that one little fleeting moment of connection i had there when they're stinker who never actually loved him but that's the end of there i think the point is dostoevsky saying that actually isn't enough that you know if she's holding up the two of them and she's saying he's like saying like nastenka has proactively gone after a real life and um kind of planting the seed of dreamland in reality whereas he has done the opposite and he just retreats into dreamland rather than using the spark of you know something that was real and and you know exciting and pleasurable for that to propel him into the real world well if you were being skeptical towards the narrator you would say he has um inflated a four-night connection with somebody who didn't actually love him at all

1:06:27no he's inflated he's describing it as a moment of bliss and a moment of um you know ecstasy and all of this sort of thing but that in itself is just a form of dreaming he's deluding himself about what it actually meant when to her it was just a yeah the way she it's a passing it's a nothing it's a you know something that she probably won't barely even remember i think the fact that it is so one-sided it's so fraternal for her there isn't even you know the hint of of a spark on her side means that there's for me throughout the book is a relationship totally absent of chemistry it it didn't excite me or really entice me at all i wasn't even really rooting for him because he never he never kind of grew a backbone i think i think he's simple

1:07:13you know you can be sympathetic towards him you can feel sorry for him you can be rather moved by the ardor of his love given how little there was to inspire it but i didn't really care whether or not they ended up together as a result well i agree with you actually on that and some of the sort of more tiktok friendly listeners may be horrified by this if they love this book but to me the characters are so thin are so thin what do we know of him he is a dreamer what do we that's it we don't have any more you know we don't know what he looks like we don't know what he thinks about things we don't know you know we just know that he's melancholy and he loves fantasy it's his own fantasies with her

1:07:56we know that she is in love with the lodger but do we know anything else about her at all is there anything that would allow you to recognize Nastenka in a room? I don't know. I quite liked her. I think that she is clearly quite feisty and quite, you know, she is desperate for connection. And so she goes out after it at any cost. You know, she leaves her grandmother. She makes her move on on the lodger she reads those books and she falls in love with him she selfishly forges a friendship that she probably knows deep down is full of romance on his side in order to find comfort there she really goes after what she wants okay well i i thought i thought she was thin frankly i found them both quite thin i felt yeah i mean i mean mean, like you, I wasn't really invested in their relationship. And I have to say, I really do like books. I love books about unrequited love. sort of classic canon the problem for me was i didn't see them as real people i just saw them as

1:09:05frankly a little bit cliched you know sort of mooning melancholy you know russian mid-century types the cultural thing that i was thinking about while reading this i know i'm not the first person to make this comparison have you seen the film before sunrise yeah it's a great film ethan hawke and julie delpy they're like backpackers and they meet one night in Vienna and they have this. They have a connection. They have an amazing connection. Yeah, they do. They have great chemistry. They have fantastic chemistry. And you were saying, you know, love at first sight or whatever. I think when you watch that film, especially if you watch it when you're relatively young, you totally invest in those characters and their connection.

1:09:42It feels so bittersweet. They're not just for one night but they have they are soulmates and they have you know they have this most wonderful relationship that's not just kind of sexual they really speak to something in each other's souls i mean that sounds so sort of pretentious but you know no but i i know what you mean one thing that he certainly i think does do quite well is the way that he um forges an atmosphere of dreaminess almost magical realism the sense that you don't you walk the line between what's really happening what's in their heads quite well and he that malleability is is well constructed i think that point you made about about the sense of them being a mood rather than you know it's not a realist book or whatever it's just but you absolutely feel the mood of kind of russia in there or some you know what the canals and the

1:10:29sort of people drifting along the canals in a miserable way and all that um the other thing i was going to say was comparing it again with the ethan hawke film in that film the characters have a massive connection and they really understand each other in this they don't understand each other at all and actually yes a lot of the conversation is they're not understanding each other. Her just being baffled by his dreams and him not really getting how much she loves this lodger. You know, he's made a dream figure of her that's not the reality of her. And I think it's telling when you look at the construction of the book. They both talk in these long monologues and tell each other stories. I mean, he tells her a story about himself in the third person.

1:11:08Sexy. But actually, when they're talking in dialogue, in actual conversation, they're often just talking at cross purposes and not really getting each other. Or he's disguising his true feelings. Or she's saying, I don't understand what you mean. And that, for me, says these are not soulmates separated by fate. These are two people who actually don't get each other at all. Because they just don't listen to each other really, do they? They kind of talk over and around each other. But given all this, why then do you think this book has struck such a chord? Why is this, you know, the enormous unprecedented hit that it has been? Well, I'd be interested to know what you think. I think it's short. I i mean that sounds so banal wow but i think it's very short and we're in an a i mean

1:11:52reading up about it there i'm not the first person to make this point there are lots of people who like to do kind of reading challenges and things and to you know to have knocked it off for dostoevsky yeah well good for them it's something that people want to do and it's short. I think it speaks to a couple of things. You know, in a world in which more people live alone than ever before, people are struggling to find, you know, 20-somethings settle down much later, if at all. Yeah, and also I suppose, you know, the disappointed romantic ideals resulting from dating apps maybe something like that you know you're not going to just meet someone in a pub and be like wow we belong together you know you can swipe through many many different options i

1:12:38suppose there's an element of that i think also i mean the fact that it took off at the height of the pandemic kind of during covid yeah that's such a good time of intense dislocation and aimlessness and loneliness and so i think it's i think it's not actually the romance of it necessarily that has resulted in its popularity so much as the idea of like the loneliness and the fantasy world i think the dreaming that's the bit that i will remember from it actually. Me too. I think it's a good invocation of what it's like to be a bit lonely and to live your life, to almost look forward to returning to your daydreaming. To melancholy. Listening to sad music or whatever. I mean, I do get it. I find that I'm often kind of drawn to sad things.

1:13:21There is something very romantic and poignant about it. You know, it's the Lizzie Siddle pre-Raphaelite Ophelia in the river. Yeah. And I think that has a higher cultural premium now than it did, let's say, 30 years ago. So in, let's say, the 1990s, was it cool to be incredibly sad and to talk about your suffering and to talk about how lonely you were and to be reading Dostoevsky, sort of very ostentatiously dosta esky i would say no it wasn't people didn't really privilege such things it wasn't seen you know it was seen as a bit odd and it wasn't seen as a cool thing in any way i think now doing a sort of tiktok video or whatever where you're quite weepy and you say gosh this book really speaks to me and how sad and miserable i am clearly has a kind of higher cultural premium than it would have done 30

1:14:08years ago yeah it's the tumblr aesthetic isn't it i'm not super a favorite tumblr to be honest do people do that on tumblr yeah tumblr is kind of it's like sad girl aesthetic right yeah i mean you could say you could say that well maybe people were feeling that back then, but they just, you know, didn't have the space to talk about it or whatever. But regardless, it wasn't lauded, I suppose. No, and I think there's clearly there are always melancholy people. There are always lonely people. But I think there are particular moments, there are kind of cultural moments when that feels particular, that strikes a chord with the mass audience. And then there are cultural moments where it doesn't because people are bored of it.

1:14:47I know the romantics or something. Obviously, that's a point or the fantasy or whatever. I think this is what we are in one of those moments right now. And that's why this book. Spins and roundabouts. Exactly. So the question is, is it a good book? So I think you should mark it first, Abby. You can go first first uh what should we write in it what should we mark it in i'm gonna suggest rain sodden russian love letters but if you have a better no i think that's brilliant because it's actually very little in the book there are a few objects this is what i mean about the strange hazy divide between dreamland and the real world yeah it's all like misty and gray i can't picture anything from the book really it's so immaterial yeah it is it's conversations and emotion and um agreed so

1:15:34i mean i hate to say this because i know it was it must mean a lot to a lot of people it just left me so cold it just didn't really move me i found lots of it quite boring that said i still think the writing is often beautiful i like that i like the prose in this i i like the way that he summoned you know his descriptions of his dreaming um i felt sorry for him at times and the unrequited love of it all uh i didn't mind nastinka and i also do think there was a strangely recognizable romantic dynamic in it, which still holds weight today. But it's just, I think I'm going to have to give it a six. Six. So the good news for you is that people on social media will definitely not be coming for you.

1:16:18They'll be coming for me. Oh, this is brilliant. Because I... Get him, get him. That guy, Jack Edwards, who's always like sobbing on TikTok. Oh, he's coming for you. He's coming around with a meat cleaver. He's going to be shocked by this. I think this is so, I think it's really thin. I think it, I found it, you know, I've done my best because it's a podcast, but I found this really slight and ultimately forgettable. Yes, it's forgettable totally. I haven't thought about it once no i finished same with me same with me i sort of strove hard to make the inception parallel yeah sweating desperately racking my brains but i found the situation yes you know i do like books about unrequited love but this felt and there are ways and there are moments where it's well-observed, psychologically well-observed.

1:17:07But ultimately, it is quite a hackneyed situation. I mean, all the people who said, gosh, this is the best thing about love I've ever read. I thought, what better than Madame Bovary? Better than Anna Karenina? Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? Better than Thomas Hardy? I mean, that's just from the 19th century. You know, there are so many great books about just from the 19th century you know there are so many great books about love in the 19th century alone that i don't think this is remotely in the same league i think it's acquired an extraordinary level of popularity for different reasons the kind of political uh cult of dostoevsky the sort of social media side of things um all, and the fact that it's short. And so I'm going to give it a very limp and rain-sodden four.

1:17:50Is that your lowest mark ever? I think East of Eden was down there, wasn't it? Did you? My God. Your two lowest marks ever are Steinbeck and Dostoevsky. Two overrated writers. You know what? I respect it. There's no point doing the show if you're not going to be honest. It's true. I bitterly resented East of Eden half way through that book because it was so long. What have we got coming up? We've got The Shining by Stephen King. That's a more accurate portrait of a relationship, I think. Well, it's that classic trope. You know, it's actually it's the reversal of enemies to lovers. It's lovers to enemies. But also, Tabby, this is what happens when you marry a writer yeah it's true i'm doomed um

1:18:31and then there is uh the capture in the rye by jd salinger master and commander by patrick o'brien also very romantic particular mockingbird by harper lee money by martin amos tinker taylor soldier spy by john le carre test the d'urbaville's by thomas hardy now we're talking to that now Particular Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Money by Martin Amis. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John O'Carra. Test of the Derbyvilles by Thomas Hardy. Now we're talking. So looking forward to that. Now we're talking. Yeah. And then Dune by Frank Herbert. Big lineup. All right. See you, everybody. John Cena here. Some people say I got range. Comedy, action, drama. You know what else has range? Chime. You get fee-free banking and 5% cash back on everyday purchases.

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