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Title: Uncle’s Dream
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translator: Garnett
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 183
Words: 49K
In so many ways this reminded me of the Mapp & Lucia series by EF Benson if there was only Lucia with a daughter. In this story, Mama is trying to get a rich match for her daughter and a rich, but old, sick and partly crazy, Prince is the target. The Mama has the entire village under her thumb and they chafe and so do what they can to upset the plans. And the daughter is horrified but goes along and the other, younger suitor, acts like an idiot and hurts the feelings of the daughter and thus extinguishes his own chances. Eventually, the Prince, thinking it is all a dream, escapes from the village and the Mama is a laughing stock and the daughter eventually marries some high ranking politician.
I guess this was a commentary on the people of the times. Of course, that’s not much different than the people of today. Selfish, back stabbing, irresponsible, greedy, etc, etc. Thankfully, Dostoyevsky uses humor so it’s not grim and horrible but by the time the story was done I was ready to leave that little Russian village.
★★★✬☆
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
Is that your condo on the cover?
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It is! Good eye.
We recently relocated due to the economy and got a stunning deal…
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The old prince thinks the story is a dream, and he’s not the main character? That sounds a bit weird.
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It’s a weird little tale overall.
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That all sounds a bit bonkers.
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For all that Russian authors can be prosaic, they have this really odd streak deep down.
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I have a feeling that might apply to all Russians.
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And that’s a BoBa FaCt!!
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Indeed I would not recommend that village as a vacation spot, considering your comments…. 😉
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😀
Definitely not a 5star destination, haha
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Ahhh mean people doing mean things. This does sound like a very obscure Dostoyevsky story. How did you organize the reading order for his stuff? Absolutely random? Part of a larger collection that you’re reading progressively in the proposed order?
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I’ve got one of those “complete works of….” and I just read them in the order they’re presented. I don’t know how they’re organized, definitely not alphabetically…
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