If anyone had told me before today that it was possible for me to be utterly stunned by the depiction of an act of violence in a work of fiction I would told them that that was next to impossible. After all, this is a reader who took Blood Meridian in his stride and that's about as extreme as it's possible to get. (Actually, I found McCarthy's great novel extremely disturbing, but I could cope without physically shuddering.)
And then today I read the conclusion of Chapter 3, Book 11 of The Brothers Karamazov. To say my reaction to Dostoevsky's penultimate paragraph was visceral is an understatement. To add to the impact, I happened to be reading it in a very public place and had to hide my state of disturbance. Fortunately I was able to cover up. Just.
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