On my shelf since:
Apparently forever? Several of my family members exclaimed with dismay when they realized I hadn’t read this book yet. The spine is so wide some of us have been staring at that accusing “K” our whole lives.
My copy’s origin story:
(Paperback, 1992) This book could maybe have been my Dad’s book originally, but I might only be thinking that because it’s about fathers and baseball and the 60’s and moral quandaries.
Why not until now:
So many pages! (But didn’t I figure out a clever work-around for that?)
Review:
At my age — that’s a new fun way to start a sentence — I feel less and less concerned about breaking my own make-believe rules. These days I don’t always have to do the dishes before I go to bed, or respond to every funny text from my spouse with a HAHA (you already know I think you’re funny). I’m still not completely ready to swear in front of my kids or wear black and non-denim blue together, but I’m working on it. My original plan for this blog was that I would buckle down and finish every book on my shelf and then have something insightful, or whatever, to say about them. But this book’s 645 pages of moral responsibility and inherited philosophy has broken something in me, so I’m shaking myself free of my own short-sighted rules and doing whatever I want. Chaos!
On its face, Brothers K is tailor-made for me. A Pacific NW-based family epic about baseball? What’s not to love? Apparently all the religion-y stuff. Normally, I’m good with reading about religion and religious people, ideas, quandaries, explorations, evolutions, etc. Might sound strange coming from me, but I think my issues with this book come from the way the most religious characters were being conveyed as somewhat ridiculous straw men. And also that — here’s me flogging a dead Bechdel horse — they were often the female characters (straw women, if you will). To be fair, there were also science-minded female characters, but alas still portrayed as somewhat ridiculous (i.e. Grandawma). The four sons whose disparate religious paths (molded by a devoutly religious mother, a devoutly science-minded grandmother, and a devoutly baseball-y father) we were going to follow for the remainder of the novel — aptly in keeping with the main theme of The Brothers Karamazov — I just didn’t find that interesting. Blah, blah Mother, Father, and Gma set children in motion. Blah, blah, kids probably turn out different from each other. Too much like my own life but with less well-written characters!
My understanding is that I got through all the best baseball parts, so I’m good with being done now. Next up, a book about tractors or something…
(Finished reading the book Feb 19, 2026)
Payoff (pages I read per stars):
266/2 = 133 pages to have to get through to earn each star
Misc Ratings (Out of 5):
- Likability of the ridiculous baseball-y characters: 5
- Likability of the ridiculous religious-y characters: 0
- Resulting imbalance as you might imagine: 5
Bechdel Test: Slightly-less fail. The sisters (and grandma) have a whole scene to themselves that includes the one of the best lines from the book:
“You may grow up to become a gargoyle, or a harridan, or a guttersnipe!” she snapped. “We can’t possibly know – and thank goodness not! What most of us become as adults would terrify us a children.” p. 214
(Only two more books to go until I get to the next woman writer)
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