White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – A painful, saddening, but ultimately bittersweet and cute little novella that made my day!

I picked up White Nights a few days ago, and finished It in a couple of days, given how short it was, and I really liked it!

It was my first Dostoevsky read, because I heard it was a good introduction to his writing style. It can be so elegant and gorgeous, but sometimes sentences and paragraphs can be so, so long, causing me to re-read every few sentences more than I usually do! This book had a paragraph that lasted 7 and a half (small, albeit) pages!

I adored learning about our protagonist, a loner with no friends or partner, who's slowly losing the only engagement he ever has : there are fewer and fewer strangers for him to greet as he walks through St Petersburg since they're all leaving to go to their dachas (which I recently learnt is a name to describe Russian holiday homes), with their family and friends, something our protagonist unfortunately lacks.

The companionship and connection he shares with the sweet young stranger he meets, Nastenka, is so human, so heartwarming: there's something so relatable at how he interacts with this woman he's never met before. It was heartbreaking when he opens up to her, revealing that the only real relationships he forms are those in his own dreams and fantasies, causing him to fumble real life acquaintanceship as he's lost in his dreams, and yet this makes the moments he shares with Nastenka so much more special, as it might be the first moments of genuine connection he's experienced in a long, long time.

And it is because these moments are so precious to him personally, that the ending of the novel hits you right in the gut. Despite them both falling in love with each other, Nastenka goes on to marry the man she has been waiting for, for over a year, and she's basically lost to our protagonist forever (she says in her letter that they will still always be friends, but the friend-zone is not some place anyone particularly would want to be in).

However, at the very end of the story, he doesn't feel anger at Nastenka for leaving him behind, he doesn't feel jealousy for the guy marrying her, and he doesn't feel despair for the lonely life he will lead in the future. Instead he feels grateful that in his entire life of solitude, Nastenka, this sweet human being, had given him a moment of real, true, happiness, as potentially his only genuine, close companion. And it ends with the famous, bittersweet quote "My god! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?"

8/10, I want to read more Dostoevsky now.