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brendapike 's review for:
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
I love Russian literature. Turgenev, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky—they're always reliable reads. But it's taken me a long time to work my way up to War and Peace. It just has such a reputation! I was amazed when I found it so readable. Yes, its cast of characters is sprawling and it's based on historical events, but it's really about making the huge and impersonal small and personal. So the war and court politics are dealt with at length, but their effects are also shown in relation to one family. Yes, it can be grand, but it can also be domestic. In its detail about high society it's almost Proustian.
Unfortunately, it ended with a whimper. Much like with Moby Dick and whaling, the actual story is interspersed with chapters entirely about history, philosophy, and military maneuvers. This gets much worse about halfway through the book, pretty much the moment Napoleon appears not as a far-off celebrity, but an actual character. And the last section is a treatise disproving free will (in multiple parts). It's as if Tolstoy wrote separate books and shoehorned them together. I imagine his approach (dealing with history through "normal" people) was revolutionary at the time, but now it just comes across as not fully realized.
All in all, a worthwhile read, but in need of an editor.
Unfortunately, it ended with a whimper. Much like with Moby Dick and whaling, the actual story is interspersed with chapters entirely about history, philosophy, and military maneuvers. This gets much worse about halfway through the book, pretty much the moment Napoleon appears not as a far-off celebrity, but an actual character. And the last section is a treatise disproving free will (in multiple parts). It's as if Tolstoy wrote separate books and shoehorned them together. I imagine his approach (dealing with history through "normal" people) was revolutionary at the time, but now it just comes across as not fully realized.
All in all, a worthwhile read, but in need of an editor.