Rating: 
Summary: An early writing.
Review: 'The Double' along with other novels like 'Poor Folk' is from the early period of his writership. The novel is influenced by Gogol and this explains the Fantasy elements of 'The Double' The novel is not so flamboyant like the works he wrote later like 'The Idiot' or 'Crime and Punishment', but if you are interested in the novels of the young Dostoyevsky, 'The Double' is strongly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: This Book is NOT Written in the First Person......
Review: .....despite what certain illustrious reviews may tell you. It makes you wonder if they even actually read the book.
Rating:
Summary: This Book is NOT Written in the First Person......
Review: .....despite what certain illustrious reviews may tell you. It makes you wonder if they even actually read the book.
Rating:
Summary: Psychological Brilliance by Dostoyevsky
Review: Dostoevsky takes us on a trip through the mind of Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin, who is plagued by visions of his double, Golyadkin Junior, who resembles him identically. Golyadkin's hallucinations evoke feelings of sympathy, concern, and intrigue in the reader; and prove to be a delightful psychological study. I found myself reading at a feverish pace as the book progressed towards its angstful denouement. Dostoevsky teases the reader by leaving certain things unsaid, and this works wonderfully to heighten the anxiety and drama of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Psychological Brilliance by Dostoyevsky
Review: Dostoevsky takes us on a trip through the mind of Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin, who is plagued by visions of his double, Golyadkin Junior, who resembles him identically. Golyadkin's hallucinations evoke feelings of sympathy, concern, and intrigue in the reader; and prove to be a delightful psychological study. I found myself reading at a feverish pace as the book progressed towards its angstful denouement. Dostoevsky teases the reader by leaving certain things unsaid, and this works wonderfully to heighten the anxiety and drama of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and haunting early Dostoevsky.
Review: Dostoevsky's second novel comes pretty late in the day of the first European doppelganger/double cycle. it's the usual thing - a complacently respectable civil servant, Mr. Golyadkin, is publicly humiliated. Soon, an exact replica of himself enters his life, receiving undeserved favour from the hero's superiors, while behaving atrociously and getting Golyadkin blamed. Does the second Golyadkin really exist? Does he represent the hero's dark side, the Id lurking in his subconscious, performing the transgressions his bourgeois public persona would dare not? Is it all a nightmare? Is Golyadkin a schizophrenic? Mad? All par for the course.The novel's subtitle gives a clue to its real worth - 'a poem of St. Petersburg'. Dostoevsky's descriptions of this snow- and wind-lashed city, with its dank, claustrophobic, labyrinthine streets, squelching with mud, its menacing tenements and restaurants, and the bordering restless, gloomy river, are a vivid backdrop to Golyadkin's circular nightmare - the storm scene when he discovers his double is an atmospheric tour de force. Dostoevsky's style in this novel was apparently modelled on Gogol - certainly it is immediate, intrusive, sarcastic, ironic, bathetic, fast, very funny, yet always unsettling, even poetic. Golyadkin should deserve our sympathy, yet his self-importance, long-windedness and cowardice are rendered comically ridiculous, and from the beginning, with the strange ball, the elliptical narrative and ambiguous point of view, the reader's sympathies and interpretations are constantly shifting. Written in 1846, before the arrest and spiritual crisis, there is no contrived redemption here, and the novel's resolution is more satisfying than some of the later work's, although the author himself was surely right when he said later that the first half is far superior to the second. Best of all are the public set-pieces that frame Golyadkin's identity crisis. (I recommend Jessie Coulson's fluid Penguin translation, which, a few infelicities aside, captures something of the book's rapidity and playfulness).
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and haunting early Dostoevsky.
Review: Dostoevsky's second novel comes pretty late in the day of the first European doppelganger/double cycle. it's the usual thing - a complacently respectable civil servant, Mr. Golyadkin, is publicly humiliated. Soon, an exact replica of himself enters his life, receiving undeserved favour from the hero's superiors, while behaving atrociously and getting Golyadkin blamed. Does the second Golyadkin really exist? Does he represent the hero's dark side, the Id lurking in his subconscious, performing the transgressions his bourgeois public persona would dare not? Is it all a nightmare? Is Golyadkin a schizophrenic? Mad? All par for the course. The novel's subtitle gives a clue to its real worth - 'a poem of St. Petersburg'. Dostoevsky's descriptions of this snow- and wind-lashed city, with its dank, claustrophobic, labyrinthine streets, squelching with mud, its menacing tenements and restaurants, and the bordering restless, gloomy river, are a vivid backdrop to Golyadkin's circular nightmare - the storm scene when he discovers his double is an atmospheric tour de force. Dostoevsky's style in this novel was apparently modelled on Gogol - certainly it is immediate, intrusive, sarcastic, ironic, bathetic, fast, very funny, yet always unsettling, even poetic. Golyadkin should deserve our sympathy, yet his self-importance, long-windedness and cowardice are rendered comically ridiculous, and from the beginning, with the strange ball, the elliptical narrative and ambiguous point of view, the reader's sympathies and interpretations are constantly shifting. Written in 1846, before the arrest and spiritual crisis, there is no contrived redemption here, and the novel's resolution is more satisfying than some of the later work's, although the author himself was surely right when he said later that the first half is far superior to the second. Best of all are the public set-pieces that frame Golyadkin's identity crisis. (I recommend Jessie Coulson's fluid Penguin translation, which, a few infelicities aside, captures something of the book's rapidity and playfulness).
Rating: 
Summary: Doublemint twins in Dostoyevsky's world
Review: Dostoyevsky has always been one to over describe (which is a positive attribute) but, this particular book seemed to be low in that area and lacked. Actually, the (entire) book seemed to be unfinished.
I enjoyed the parts where Golyadkin would do things and then in great fear would leave - the party for instance - or go shopping, as the reader thinks but, it is just another insane gesture on Golyadkin's character.
Golyadkin Senior and Juniour would see people, but these people were either not described or never heard of again. One person was even brought into the plot within the last two pages of text. It can be quite confusing and rather unpleasant; not something I like to see in a literary work.
It almost seems as though this was one of Dostoyevsky's first books. The mystery and intrigue were there but definetly not at his best like in 'The Gambler' or 'Netochka Nezvanova'.
I would put this book forth to someone who has read other Dostoyevsky books and enjoys him but, not to someone who is a first time reader.
Rating:
Summary: The Double - Significant, short work of early Dostoyevsky
Review: Golyadkin is a government clerk who, decreed by fate, encounters a man who not only resembles him exactly but is also his namesake. Golyadkin's own musings and foreshadowing along with his curious actions all afford hints and glimpses of a psychological realism that persists throughout the novel. On a stormy night in which Golyadkin tried to regain his composure after the hails of slights had descended him at a private party of the high society, he met his double. The double (who was subsequently being referred as the Golyadkin junior and the adversary), with bold effrontery, went out his own way to show Golyadkin impudence, insulted Golyadkin, and purloined Golyadkin's papers in order to win approbation of the double's superiors at work. Like "Notes From Underground", "The Double" is a close examination of human consciousness, through an unreliable narrator. I repeatedly raise the question whether this imposture really happens? Does the Golyadkin junior (the double) really exist in cold fact? What really happens at the end? Perhaps the real horror of Golyadkin senior (whom Dostoyevsky eventually refers him as our hero) is that he unconsciously knows his double simply being the side of his own nature that he disapproves, despises and fears? Regardless of the existence of the double, the imposter has simply trampled Golyadkin in the mire, perfidiously intruded him, and showed clearly that the senior and also the genuine Golyadkin is not genuine at all but a counterfeit, and that Golyadkin junior himself is the real one. The book is a portrait of the darker side of despicable personality that magnifies to the full actuality. 2000 (6)
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting only from a historical standpoint
Review: I can see two ways this book could be called interesting. One way is for people who like books that deal with paranoia and insanity. The style is interesting in this regard, to see how Dostoyevsky deals with his character's malaise. It is quite experimental and not like typical Dostoyevsky. The second way this novel could be called interesting is as a stepping stone in the development of Dostoyevsky's style. Having read this book, I have a clearer sense of how "Crime and Punishment" came to be. However, I am neither interested in paranoia or an academic analysis of Dostoyevsky's development. I'm interested in the best of Dostoyevsky's writings--the moral dillemnas, the redemption of souls, the breathless and well crafted plots. You will get none of that in this book. The central character goes crazy for no good reason, there is no redemption, there is no point. He goes insane, and that is fun for a bit, but since there's no good reason for his insanity or for the eventual denouement, you're left thinking, "that's it?"
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