White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky | book review
A guest book review of a classic novella, White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky: a tale of love, loneliness, and dreams in St Petersburg
Welcome to the latest edition of Reads With Alicia! This week, I’m privileged to share a book review of White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a classic work of Russian literature. This book review is courtesy of
, whose Substack, Al-Bayt al Hikmah, features bookish posts from book reviews of his weekly reads to thought pieces such as my favourite, ‘yes, we should judge books by their covers’. He has also contributed to my summer reads list, featuring 41 of my friends’ summer book recommendations, and hosted my guest post on the 12 books that taught me something on his Substack.I must say that I’m rather light on my Russian literature—in fact, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov may be the only book I’ve read by a Russian author—so when Arbaaz suggested reviewing Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic story, I was excited. One of the things that makes me hesitate about Russian books is that they are rather long, but at 82 pages, White Nights is very manageable. I’ll let Arbaaz tell you all about it, with his White Nights review!
I read White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of the most celebrated classic Russian novels, as part of my classic book club read and it was my very first Dostoevsky experience as well! It was quite a fascinating journey for sure!
While I am glad to have read the novel, it was in many ways an underwhelming experience. Let me explain.
The story starts with our protagonist, called simply the Dreamer, lamenting about how everyone has left town in St Petersburg, but then he comes across a woman in need, and things take a vastly different turn.
The writing
Firstly, let’s talk about the things I did enjoy. The writing is superb here. The way that Dostoevsky describes the scenery here can only be explained as mesmerising. Each street, house or flat has a personality to it. In fact, the whole of St Petersburg has a personality.
The dialogue inside the mind of the Dreamer is wonderfully captured with some of the best prose I have read recently. Even when you disagree with him (which I did… a lot), you can still understand where he’s coming from.
Another thing I found rather fascinating about the writing is something I’ve been warned about quite a lot before. That, of course, is Dostoesvsky’s stream of consciousness writing. I encountered this about halfway through and I have to admit, it was quite a slog to get through. But let me make one thing clear, it was not a slog to get through because the writing sucked. Nope, it was for completely different reasons I will explain later.
Despite the beautiful prose, however, I will say that it does kind of feel like this story was written in Dostoevsky’s early writing career. I am not exactly sure if that is true or not but that is the impression I got from it. There was a sense of roughness to it and it did not feel as polished as I was expecting it to be. Perhaps that is a stylistic choice I did not know about, or the translation I read sucked, or maybe it was a mix of both or all three factors. Who knows (except the die-hard fans, I guess).
The characters
Look, it’s one thing to have flawed characters, but a totally different thing to have some of the most annoying ones. And that is precisely what my issue was with this story. On one hand, the Dreamer is actually quite relatable in his laments and sorrows. You can feel his pain of being utterly alone and never quite fitting in. As an introvert and someone who is getting more and more misanthropic towards the world as I grow older, I can completely understand his plight. And as I said earlier, the writing does help a lot here.
The problem I have with the character is a complete lack of self-awareness that comes across as completely whiny and immature. Firstly, the blame is entirely on society and never about his own faults. Whenever he is recounting his experience of being rejected, there is not a single instance where he reconsiders his assumptions and says, ‘maybe I was wrong here,’ but rather that everyone else is too boring, too cruel or too careless.
Secondly, without spoiling anything, his encounter with Nastenka is entirely selfish. There is an instance where he actively wishes she gets harassed so he can come and ‘rescue’ her. Plus, the treatment he gives to Nastenka when things don’t go his way and his inner monologue about it all seems too… immature. Something that is obvious and totally not her fault seems like a betrayal to him, and his reaction feels like it comes out of nowhere.
There is an air of misogyny in his character that is never fully addressed nor pointed out. Sometimes it feels like even a romanticisation of it.
Nastenka, in contrast to him, has a level of self-awareness. She warns him up front about her intentions and throughout the story, she does not falter or change her mind. The only problem in her character I found was, just like the Dreamer, she too was mourning the loss of someone she shouldn’t have. It is quite cyclical in that sense.
Meditations on moving forward and isolation (mild spoilers)
Throughout the novel, there is a running theme about moving forward. The story literally starts with the Dreamer being left alone in St Petersburg by everyone in town. This is mirrored by the fact that there was someone who he used to live with but he no longer does. He constantly mentions people who knew him or he knew them but they no longer are with him.
When he meets Nastenka, he constantly gets anxious about her leaving him behind, and he even says this to her.
Nastenka, on the other hand, cannot move forward because of her own desires for someone else. She tells a story about how her aunt used to nail her dress to her side so she wouldn’t run away, which seems to me to be as the most direct symbolisation of this desire.
When she tells this, she also tells of her love for someone who has left her behind and now she’s mourning his loss as well. She tells our protagonist that she cannot move on without him and despite him never contacting her again, she is still in love with him.
Another such theme I encountered in the tale is that of isolation. It is quite clear from the start that our protagonist deeply desires human connection, and in doing so creates delusions for himself. He talks about people who he knew that never once spoke to him, people who he has seen in almost all their life stages.
Even his encounter with Nastenka is driven by a desperate desire to connect with someone. He recounts his tale to her about how he knew someone who left him quite rudely because he was not able to connect.
He is called the Dreamer by most because of his tendency to daydream constantly. Since there is not much human interaction, he claims he gets so lost in his thoughts that the world around him starts to disappear, which is yet another symbol of loneliness in the story.
Conclusion
Hints like these throughout the story make me think that this is not an unrequited love story as much as it is a story of a desperate, lonely man seeking connection, and trying to move forward in his life and yet not being able to. In that regard, the story is quite brilliant.
Despite my acknowledgement of the themes here, I could not bring myself to like it as much as I wanted to. I recognise it is a classic and for good reason, but the character of the Dreamer was far too annoying, the long monologues not helping much.
And the emotional impact of the story was not as hard on me personally because it felt too predictable. I could see from the middle of the story what’s going to happen, and it did. I was not surprised at all. And the complete lack of self-awareness here kind of ruined it a bit for me.
I still enjoyed the story for what it was and I am definitely more intrigued to read more Dostoevsky now.
Overall rating: 3.5/5
Thanks again to
for sharing his thoughts on this book! He posts lots of interesting things, so do check out his Substack. These are some of my favourite posts by Arbaaz:
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Have you read White Nights? If you have, we would love your thoughts on this piece of classic Russian literature!
Which books have you read that touch on loneliness and isolation? How does this interact with love?
What are the differences between a flawed character and an annoying character?
Have you read any books with long monologues, and how do you think they added to or took away from the book?
Which books are you currently reading?
haha I had the same thoughts about White Nights. The writing was good. The opening line was brilliant. But I hated how lovesick the Dreamer was and Nastenska being so undecisive. The Dreamer was redeemed for me in the end though when he quietly accepted his defeat.
I'm so pleased to find someone else who wasn't blown away by White Nights! I feel like every review I read or watch sings its praises. It was fine, but I didn't like it.