SPOILERS YADDA YADDA BLAH BLAH BLAH

There's this one part near the end of the book -- when Dmitri is on trial -- where his brother Ivan has a nervous breakdown while testifying to clear Dmitri's name. Thing is, Ivan's been hounded for several nights by visions of the Devil; appearing to him not as a great big red horned goat man, but as a shabby washed up owner of land and slaves. Of the central questions Ivan poses to the reader: "Why did Christ refuse to build his Church and save the world through worldly acts of miracles? Why not turn stones to bread and feed the world as the Devil tempted him to in the wilderness?" Another: How can we have faith in a Lord that allows the suffering, torture, sickness, and death of innocent children? Shortly after Ivan poses these questions, his brother Alyosha has a crisis of faith when his elder, the saintly Father Zosima, dies and leaves a putrid, reeking corpse behind. Not only a lack of miracle (if he was truly a saint, then God would preserved his body), but a flagrant lack, almost an inverted miracle disproving the elders saintliness.

Anyway, when Ivan is having his breakdown in the court, he hallucinates that the Devil is there, with them, sitting in the courtroom. Not in the observation gallery, not with the jury, not even with the judges. The Devil, as he appears to Ivan, sits beneath the table with the material evidence. I haven't been able to get that out of my head since I read it. And you understand it sort of, right there. At least I think I did. .

Another thing. There's a boy who dies at the end. A sweet, proud, unruly, innocent child of eight years old. We sit in on his funeral, we watch his father anxiously fiddle with all sorts of things; candlesticks and ikons and other such funerary accoutrements-- as if in some sort of a daze. Knowing that Dostoevsky lost his three year old son before writing the book, one can probably imagine that this detail is painfully autobiographical. Another detail. The boys body doesn't stink at all.

Best novel I've ever read probably.