I was twelve years old when I started reading The Brothers Karamazov, fifteen when I finished and nineteen when I understood it. What was a twelve year old doing reading Dostoyevsky? Well, I'm not particularly smart. I think I'm above average, but so does everyone else, and if I am above average I'm definitely the dumbest of the smart. I wasn't particularly interested in reading it either, I was more into sci-fi, fantasy and humour when I was young. The reason I was reading it is because my father told me to. I had just finished reading 'Mostly Harmless' and since that was a book for adults and intellectuals I thought I was top-shit. So to cut me down a peg my father gave me 'The Brothers Karamazov' to read.
The book was wasted on such a young child, although it did help me humiliate my grade six English teacher who insisted that putting 'The End' at the end of a story was idiotic (or at least, slightly redundant) and only mediocre authors did it.