Uncle's Dream is decidedly more light-hearted than the other Dostoevsky works I have read thus far. In fact, some parts of it was quite a hoot to read, and I can imagine the scenes as if they were transplanted into some dramatized Cantonese soap where the mother was desperately trying to marry her daughter off to a gold turtle (never mind that the old turtle was probably as old as her father).
It is astonishingly incredible how the psyche of Russians 170 years ago as narrated by Dostoevsky still feels so fresh and relevant. Pavel Alexandrovich would also not be out of place today as an asshole.
In fact, I was rather puzzled as I was reading, as the title was not immediately obvious in the story. It felt to me that the gist was Maria Alexandrovna Moskalyova's ambitions for her daughter. It was only in Chapter 11 that the title Uncle's Dream finally made sense.
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