So... I did it. I finally convinced myself to read War and Peace, partly because it's just something everyone wants to say they've done, and partly because one always needs a good excuse to procrastinate during the exam period when I should have been studying. And, you know what, I really enjoyed most of it. The novel is far less taxing than I imagined, I don't know if that's because the English translation goes easy on us non-Russians or because Tolstoy wrote it in a quite light-hearted fashion. I suspect I shall never find that out for myself.

Personally, I think a much better title for this book would be War and People. Because, though an in-depth look at history during the time Napoleon had ambitions to take over Europe, this is first and foremost about humanity and Tolstoy observes humanity and all its weirdness with a sense of humour and occasionally sadness. I don't like to make too many predictions about the older authors, some people will tell you that Bram Stoker was a feminist and William Shakespeare was a humanist, I think these are quite melodramatic conclusions to make about authors who lived in societies where they would struggle to be that.

However, Tolstoy may or may not consider himself liberal, forward-thinking, a humanist, and I wouldn't state that he is any of those things. But I think his perception of the human condition in the nineteenth century shows he is somewhat before his time in his ability to see almost every character as flawed, confusing but ultimately human. He manages to construct a comphrehensive view of humanity and Russian culture at the time in question, complete with betrayals and scandals and affairs. But though the characters may place blame on one another - like calling Natasha a hussy - Tolstoy appears to remain impartial. Those who stray from the conservative path of the nineteenth century do not do so without reason.

Another reason that War and People is a much better title for this book is because there is very little peace going on in here. There are times when the battles aren't raging, of course, but there is always something equally dramatic happening within the social world of Russian high society. People falling in and out of love, people having affairs, wealthy aristocrats dying and leaving their fortune to illegitimate sons. It seems to me that there's a constant war going on in this book, just sometimes it isn't on the battlefield.

And oddly enough, it was the real wars in War and Peace that interested me least of all. They were probably the reason this book got four stars instead of five - and because goodreads rating system is about personal enjoyment rather than literary merit. I felt much more entertained by the soap opera that was the lives of the Russian nobles than by the tedious and repetitive battle scenes. There were guns and canons and horses - riveting. But thankfully, like I said, Tolstoy's masterpiece is more about people than anything else and this is the reason that I saw this book through and enjoyed the journey.

It's a well-known fact that, in writing War and Peace, Tolstoy was going for the big laugh, but the more he wrote, the more elusive it became.* I only reached page 200, so never read the comedy ending.

Bet it's brilliant, though.

* This is not a fact. I made it up.

"On any first reading, War and Peace is bound to dazzle with its immense panorama of humanity. The whole of life appears to be contained in its pages. Tolstoy presents us with a cast of several hundred characters. Yet to each one he brings such profound understanding of the human condition, with all its frailties and contradictions, that we recognize and love these characters as reflections of our own identity." - Afterword by Orlando Figes, War and Peace (page 1395)

Well, I've done it! I can finally say that I've conquered this somewhat complex beast, that is, War and Peace. I've had it on my to-read list for around ten years, and now, I too, can finally be at peace. The novel isn't as readable as I expected, especially when one compares it to other large novels, like Les Miserables, but, it was less taxing on the brain than I had imagined. It might have something to do with the English translation that I have.

This is my second Tolstoy novel, the first being Anna Karenina, which I just adored. Tolstoy has a unique writing style, that I generally favour. You can tell that he was before his time in regards to humanity, in the way in which he writes about the characters and their flaws, etc. This novel taught me history about Napoleon, that to be honest, I wasn't even aware of.

There are many scenes set in battle that I thought were just dire. They dragged, and were really quite dull. I get that there are going to be battle scenes, as we only need to refer to the title of the book, but, I noticed that the characters came in second in regards to military strategies and Napoleon. There are also many philosophical contemplations in this, so if you are greatly interested in this kind of thing, then this is certainly the book for you. Unfortunately, for me, I need something much more to make a story complete, and an abundance of philosophical ramblings, just didn't cut it.

I'm probably making it sound that there is a total lack of character development here, which actually isn't the case. Pierre's character is interesting and so is Prince Andrey's, but, both were not interesting enough to make the story better for me. There were other, more significant characters that had more of a role, but unfortunately, there wasn't enough development to enable them to grow on me. I must add, at the end of the novel sits the epilogue. Don't worry about reading it, as it adds nothing to the story, except a kind of yawn factor.

I probably shouldn't be doing so, but throughout this novel, I was comparing it to Victor Hugo's, Les Miserables. They are both hefty in size, and are both historical fiction, so with this information, I assumed that I'd love War and Peace. For me, Les Miserables exceeded my expectations and dazzled me from beginning to end. (Even throughout the rather detailed descriptions of The battle of Waterloo and the sewerage systems)It is inevitably, my favourite book of all time, and for me, War and Peace lives comfortably in it's shadow.

What can I say about War and Peace that hasn't been said already by people way more qualified than me? Let me begin by saying how incredibly happy I am to have finally read this tome of a book after being scared by it for years. But reading it was nowhere nearly as daunting as I feared it to be. The thing is that despite the 1300+ pages, It did not feel like an overly long book until the very end. There is so much happening here, war and duels and romance and heartbreak. The events keep flowing from one to the next, with the narrator's voice explaining the war strategies and people's desires with the same eloquence. And it is not just a fictional narrative. History and social philosophy are interspersed throughout, which adds to the richness. I found it a little difficult to keep track of the characters' names initially and had to resort to the family trees every now and then, primarily due to the sheer number of characters. But I got the hang of it after the first 200 pages. The war scenes were particularly effective, subtle yet powerful. Also, the last part on the events leading to Moscow's burning and the aftermath was brilliant. I just wish the epilogues were not so long. But it was a great reading experience.

دوجلدی قدیمی از کتابهای پدرم بود. جلد زیبای سبزرنگ وقهوه ای رنگ . کاغذهای زرد. در سیزده سالگی از اجبار بیکاریهای تابستان ونبودامکانات امروزه که برای بچه ها فراهم است . بعدها تقریبا" هرسال یک بارمیخواندمش . همه قهرمانها درذهنم رسوب کرده بودند . با هریک ازمردوزن همذات پنداری میکردم. ازبس که تولستوی به زیبایی موقعیت واحساس آنهاراتوصیف میکند . به طبع کتابهای آن دوره روسیه طولانی است ولی تعدد اتفاقات باعث میشود کمتر احساس خستگی کنی . همه فیلمها وسریالهایی هم که براساسش ساخته شده دیده ام وبعضا" دارم . حاضرم دوباره کسی برایم بخواندش.

شاهزاده آندره..ماریا خواهرش ، پدرشان شاهزاده بالکونسکی ..و کنت پیربوزوخوف نازنین

This book is bloated old piece of crap. How this even got published in the first place is beyond me, much less how it has been considered a 'classic' for years.

I had read that this was 1400 pages of Tolstoy giving his readers a dry, boring recount of the French invasion of Russia but I didn't believe it. I wish I had believed it. Not only is War and Peace a sleep-inducing lecture on way too many perspectives of this war, it also comes complete with Tolstoy's never-ending butt-in chapters that he uses to force his opinion on us of France, Napoleon, Alexander, Russia itself, religion, politics, love, family, and anything else that apparently came to his mind.

This was worse than a textbook. This was a textbook that came with the annoying, opinionated professor built in! The only slightly interesting parts of this book were the lives of Natasha and Ellen and that only accounts for maybe 15% of the total. This book is so bad it has two epilogues. That right there should be warning enough to you to stay far, far away from War and Peace. Don't be as dumb as me.

I wish I had never picked this up. I am an angrier, more cynical person for it. If Tolstoy wasn't already dead, I would wish him so.

این کتاب چه در زمان خودش چه بعد از گذشت ۱۵۰ سال قطعا شاهکار محسوب میشه و بنظرم هر نویسنده ای توانایی شرح یک برهه مهم تاریخی رو با این جذابیت و ابعاد نداره اما تولستوی خوب از پس این کار بر اومده ! سبک زندگی ، مناسبات رفتاری و نوع تعاملات مردم روس در قرن ۱۹ کاملا بیان شده و میشه از کتاب به عنوان یه منبع مستند برای جنگ های ناپلئون و روسیه استفاده کرد.
ترجمه هم بی نقص و عالی بود، البته از سروش حبیبی کمتر از این هم انتظار نمیره.

The strongest of all warriors are these two; Time and Patience.
War and Peace ~~~  Leo Tolstoy



Much earlier in this year, I was speaking to my friend, Srđan. I had not come up with a reading goal for 2021. It was during that conversation that I decided I would make my 2021 goal to read big classics, delving into my bucket list of books unread & inhabit a new world each month. During January, I read all four books of n  The Little Women Seriesn. In February, I took on  War and Peace.

I have found tremendous comfort the past 12 months in reading the classics. These books ~~ books that have stood the test of time ~~ have proven to be a healing balm for my soul. I have found the classics to be a remedy for distress ~~ and at this most difficult time ~~ I am reassured of the goodness of humanity by reading the classics.

War and Peace is a thrilling read. Coming in at 1,615 pages, it is also a behemoth of a book. How could it not be?  War and Peace is intricately plotted, and contains some the the most brilliant characterizations ever written. So good is  War and Peace, I'm not even sure where to start in reviewing it.



War and Peace is an epic tale of transmogrification, personal growth & spiritual rebirth. In  War and Peace, Tolstoy examines the minutia of life & the necessity of taking personal responsibility for our actions in this life.  War and Peace startles and delights the reader by discovering beauty in the mundane, as well as the violent.

The fact that we are able to relate to the characters, so easily, is actually one of  War and Peace's greatest strengths. It seems the nobility & gentry of the Motherland are not so different from you & me. Most of us tend to be more ordinary and stable than standard Russian literary characters, & it’s much easier for many to relate to a character like Natasha Rostov or Pierre Bezukhov from  War and Peace than to someone like the underground man from Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky. Through the normalcy of his characters, Tolstoy is able to express the extraordinariness of everyday living universally.

Early on, Nikolai Rostov gambles his way into tremendous debt and comes home devastated. As he is contemplating suicide, he hears his sister Natasha singing. He's heard his sister sing countless times before, but this was the first time he had listened to her intentionally. While listening to Natasha sing, Rostov is momentarily transformed. He forgets all about his debts & his afflictions & can think only of that musical harmony & how it touched him. Tolstoy wrote Oh, how that third had vibrated, and how touched was something that was best in Rostov’s soul. And that something was independent of anything in the world and higher than anything in the world. In one simple setting, Tolstoy is able to convey how an ordinary event such as listening to music is actually quite extraordinary and transformational.



With  War and Peace being so long, Tolstoy has the time for extraordinary character development. The reader gets to witness the characters as they go through trials & struggles through life in both war & peace. Some characters go from favorites to being reviled, to beloved once again as they go thru a rebirth. We were allowed to grow with the characters through continual observation. The effect on the reader of being given the gift to go on this journey with these characters is profound.

My Goodreads friend, zxvasdf, once said to me when discussing ULYSSES, "You'll always be far from finishing, even when you finish it. I don't think anyone can really appreciate Joyce's work in its entirety if they're not Joyce themselves; there'll always be mysteries abound". The same could be said of  War and Peace ~~ "You'll always be far from finishing, even when you finish it ~~ mysteries abound".

War and Peace is as relevant to the modern reader as to the reader in 1867 who undertook this Herculean read because it’s a book about life.  War and Peace expertly relays the beauty of merely being alive through its relatable characters, moving scenes & realistic character development. And this is no less valuable in a messy modern world, than it was when the novel was first written.

So, I know you've all been on edge these past two months, and since I should be studying for the social work licensing exam tonight, it seems like the perfect time to put an end to your suspense.

After all my agonizing and the thoughtful suggestions below about whether I should mutilate my gorgeous hardcover Pevear and Volokhonsky translation in the interest of less hazardous subway toting.... Readers, I carried him. All 1272 pages. Every day, across five boroughs and three states, for nearly two months....

So the burning question on your mind is, "Should I risk misalignment and a redislocated shoulder in the interest of preserving a pristine edition that's inevitably going to get all banged up anyway, as I lug it across battlefields and through trenches, for what seems an eternity? Which is more important: the book's spine, or my own?"

Bookster, I am here to put an end to all this wondering! Here is what you must do: simply take a keen exacto knife (you might ask a helpful Cossack to sharpen it for you), and slice out the final "Epilogue" portion of this burdensome tome. You will do no damage to the book -- the epilogue's like an appendix (and hey, what the hell, cut that out too) -- as this part is not necessary, and in fact though it's theoretically only about 7% of the book, this portion is actually responsible for at least 63% of its weight. So slice that bitch out, and throw it away! Your vertebrae will thank you later.

Another advantage to getting rid of the Epilogue is that it will save you from having to read what is conceivably the most deadly dull and deflating ending to a vast and magnificently readable book, ever written. As a particularly exacting size queen, I demand that the glory of a huge novel's ending be proportional to its length. I feel this is only fair: I was loyal and patient, and devoted many hours to reading the author's story, and at the end I should be rewarded for my fortitude with a glorious finale. That's always been my philosophy, anyway. Apparently, though, it's not Tolstoy's.

What is Tolstoy's philosophy, you ask? In particular, what's his philosophy of history? Well, let me tell you! Or better, let him tell you. Cause he will. Over and over. And then again. And then, in case you were interested and wanted to know more, let him REALLY tell you.... and keep telling you.... and tell you some more.... and some more.... no, let him get into it finally now, in great detail.

Yeah, Tolstoy's that perfect house guest who crashed on your couch for nearly two months and you're just thrilled as hell the whole time to have him visiting, because he's just such a smart and great and interesting and heartfelt guy. Quel raconteur! Oh, sure, sometimes he gets a bit dull and wonky with his policy ramblings, but that stuff's basically okay. And then yeah, he's got these ideés fixes about history that are fine, you guess, but it's a bit weird how he's always repeating them and focusing on the same points over and over, and he will corner your roommate's friend or a classmate you run into at the supermarket, or an old lady waiting for the bus, to explain yet again why he thinks Napoleon really isn't that great at ALL, yeah, that's odd, but basically Leo is just super, and you're thrilled to have him -- even for such an extended visit -- because he really is so brilliant and diverting and nearly truly worth his weight in gold.... You are sad to know he's going to leave, but then his plane is delayed and you're happy you'll have him there just one more night, but somehow that's the night that he suddenly decides to come back to your house, completely high on cocaine. Leo then proceeds to stay up for hours drinking all your expensive scotch and talking your EAR off about his goddamn PHILOSOPHY of HISTORY that you really just could not care LESS about, and he WILL not leave and let you go to bed, he keeps TALKING, and it's BORING, and apparently he thinks your catatonic stare signals rapt interest, because he just keeps on going, explaining, on and on -- He WILL NOT SHUT UP! It is almost just like being physically tortured, by this guy who you'd thought was the best houseguest in the whole wide world. And so when Leo finally leaves again the next morning -- ragged and bleary and too dazed still to be properly sheepish -- you're not sorry to see him go, in fact you're very glad. And does one annoying night cancel out two months of the great times you had together? Of course it doesn't, and you remember him fondly, and tell anyone who asks how nice it was when he stayed. But the night does carry a special weight because it was the last, and when you remember dear Leo, your wonderful houseguest, your affection will not be totally untainted by the memory of his dull, egotistical, coked-out rantings, the night before he left for real.

By which I mean to say, the rest of this book was totally great! As my Great Aunt Dot (who's read this twice) commented, "It's really not a difficult read at all; there's a chapter about War, and then a chapter about Peace, so it never gets boring." War and Peace is hugely entertaining, and largely readable. Plus, it's enormously educational, as you will be forced to learn more than you ever wanted to know about the great Napoleon! (According to Tolstoy, he wasn't that great. No, I mean really, he wasn't that great.) War and Peace is a terrific date book, because it's got lots of bloody action and also tons of romance, plus you can make out during the dull parts where Tolstoy's talking for like twelve pages about various generals and strategies and his nineteenth-centuried out opinions about history.

If there's a standard I value more highly than my long-book-great-ending demand, it's the one that I call "Make Me Cry." I don't really think a book's that great unless it makes me cry. (No, this doesn't work in the other direction -- just because a book makes me cry doesn't mean it's great. I've cried at really silly movies before, and I used to cry regularly whenever I read the newspaper, which is one reason I stopped.) War and Peace made me cry like a colicky baby that's been speared with a bayonet, THREE TIMES! I don't mean I misted up or got a little chokey -- I mean I sobbed, wept, and groaned, thoroughly broke down and lost my shit on a very cathartic and soul-rending level. Hooray! I can't guarantee that War and Peace will also make you cry, but I bet if you're prone to that sort of thing, you've got a good shot.

GOD this book is good. See, you should really skip the Epilogue, because besides being crushingly dull, it's also very depressing (in the wrong way), and in addition to making you vow never to marry could make you forget how GREAT and AMAZING the rest of this is. What a GREAT and AMAZING book! Holy shit! I'm flipping through now, and it's all coming back to me. This was totally The Wire of 1868: If you like serious character development and plotting that unfolds over a long period of time, you should seriously read this book. I really didn't know much about this book before I read it, but I think I remember someone -- Jane Smiley? -- writing that War and Peace is about everything. I wouldn't go along with that (I'm not sure if she would either), but it is about most of the things that really matter. If you are someone who thinks at all about life or death, you might like this book. Here is a passage, from a character who's a POW marching barefoot through Russia in October:

In captivity in the shed, [he] had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity; but now, in these last three weeks of the march, he had learned a new and more comforting truth -- he had learned that there is nothing frightening in the world. He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. He had learned that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and that those limits are very close; that the man who suffers because one leaf is askew in his bed of roses, suffers as much as he now suffered falling asleep on the bare, damp ground, one side getting cold as the other warmed up; that when he used to put on his tight ballroom shoes, he suffered just as much as now, when he walked quite barefoot (his shoes had long since worn out) and his feet were covered with sores. (p. 1060)

I just think that's great. Maybe it's not, out of context.... Anyway, one of the best things about reading this is how much of it is so strange -- Russia! 1812! OMFG! all so different! -- and how much is the same. The nuance, specificity, and instant recognizability of the characters in here is pretty amazing. I know this sounds dumb, but you really feel like you know these people, and in a way it's the minor characters -- Sonya, Anatole, Dolokhov (my favorite!) -- who are so perfectly drawn, and make you go, "Man! I know these people! Woah!"

I did appreciate having to think about war while reading this, because that's something I've never really done before. At the beginning I'd hoped that this would help me understand more about why wars happen, but it didn't. That might have been what Tolstoy was trying to explain in his Epilogue, but I have to confess that at that point, I wasn't really listening.

Anyway, I liked this book. It is long, though.

As masterworks go this one checks
All the boxes a lit prof expects.
But a colt seeking brio
Might've wished author Leo
Had condensed one called War, Peace, and Sex.

I once submitted a limerick to Poetry Magazine, and got a letter back saying I'm Bard for Life (only they used what must have been an Old English spelling: "barred").

All kidding aside, I really did read this back in my student days. I may have skimmed 100 pages of battle scenes, but felt at the time at least, that I could count it as done. My overall impression was that it probably deserved its exalted status. Some classics seem stodgy to a 20-year-old, but this one somehow resonated for reasons I no longer recall. Hence the frivolous non-review.

500th review!!!

The "Abridged Classics for Lazy People" comic summarizes "War & Peace" as follows: "Everyone is sad. It snows." Hmmm. Accurate, but I have a bit more to say about it than they do. This book has left me full of thoughts and words the way few books have done before.

Though to be fair, how exactly is one supposed to review this? This book might be titled “War & Peace”, but it’s also about the human experience as a whole: the high, the lows, the beauties, the agonies and pretty much everything in between. There are schemes, passionate encounters, fancy soirées, massacres, religious conversions, suicide attempts, duels! The title, in hindsight, is actually a bit reductionist… Everyone knows that the story focuses on four families living in Russia on the eve of the French Invasion led by Napoleon, and how this conflict impacts and changes them - directly or indirectly. This format enabled Tolstoy to create a detailed, layered tapestry of a country and culture – while keeping his readers entertained with what is basically a HUGE soap opera! Albeit, a very well written, very engaging one, with deep philosophical mussing interjected throughout. But let’s be honest here: this is Russia, so melodrama is as inevitable as snow.

I had planned to read “War & Peace” in small increments, spread over a few months, so it wouldn’t feel too imposing – and so I wouldn’t give myself carpal tunnel syndrome carrying that massive doorstopper of a book around (I am usually an absolute fetishist for paper books, but in this specific case, a Kindle copy is the only sane way to travel around with it). It turned out to be so damn good that I plowed through it much faster than anticipated (less than a month!). However it is too epic and intricate for a traditional summary: there are simply too many characters and too much stuff going on in there. So I will do what I did with my review of “Les Misérables” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and give you my likes and dislikes about this beautiful, sacred monster of a novel.

I liked:

-Pierre Bezukhov. Because I just love bespectacled, awkward people out of solidarity, but also because he is a man who decides to work on himself following a series of particularly dumb situations (am I the only one who feels bad for the bear?!). There is not a mean bone in this man’s body, which is truly remarkable, but since he naively assumes other people are as honest as he is, that gets him stuck in quite a few pickles. He takes a good, hard look at his life and begins to evolve in an unexpected way. He peels the layers of shenanigans away, and realizes that he is full of kindness and honesty, and tries to do the best he can for the people he cares about. Sometimes, he is very clumsy about it and it can get frustrating to watch him bumble around, but it comes together in the end.

-Andrei Bolkonsky. I didn't like him at first, because he's kind of a dick to his wife, but as soon as he started talking about how sick he was of the superficial high society the silly woman loved so much, and of how he couldn't stand being around dumb and vacuous people, I just nodded and said: "I hear you, dude." Of course, it's a bit extreme to prefer facing the French guns rather than endure more stupid salons, but I sympathized nonetheless. His blend of honor, philosophy and cynicism eventually melted by literary panties, and his epiphany about the senselessness of war after a close brush with death fully redeemed him. Natasha has a bit of a manic-pixie-dream-girl effect on him, where he is shaken out of his funk by her perkiness; that trope usually annoys me, but by that point, I was madly in love with him and just wanted him to get a little bit of happiness (he has officially joined the pantheon of fictional characters I would run away with in a pinch, along with Newland Archer, George Emerson and Gabriel Oak). His ultimate forgiveness towards Natasha and Anatole is deeply moving (though I would have cheered just as much if he had punched the depraved pervert in the ‘nads); I want an alternate ending where the battle of Borodino goes differently for him…

-The struggle those two guys go through to try and apply the philosophy they love so much to the way they live their lives. Sounds weird, huh? But as someone who practices a form of Buddhism that can be defined as a “philosophy of action”, I have a great appreciation for how tricky it can be to take lofty principles and try to act on them in a reality that is very often ethically imperfect. When Pierre joins the Freemasons, he is called upon to live in the service of others, to forgive those who have wronged him and to strive for what can be best be called “enlightenment”. There’s quite a few false starts to his efforts, the world being a complicated mess of a place, but he never gives up, even when if stumbles quite a bit on his way there (after all the masonic stuff, how, exactly, did you think assassination would work out, Pierre?). Similarly, after both of the major battles he gets caught in, Andrei gains a deep understanding of the beauty of the world, of the importance of loving everyone, but in a very different way from Pierre: he first begins by isolating himself to protect the world from what he might do to it (as a result of guilt), he opens up again when he meets Natasha, and eventually buries his pride by forgiving her and Anatole. I am not exaggerating when I say that the image of a forgiving hand extended towards the person who has hurt you the most in the middle of their own suffering is something I might never stop thinking about…

-The fact that the story is set over the better part of a decade allows the main characters to truly grow, evolve and reflect on their lives in ways few characters can in more modern literature. Silly Natasha, for instance, starts out just turning thirteen and by the epilogue, she’s a twenty-eight years-old married woman and mother. Her silly brother Nikolai also changes his views and ways as experiences leave their marks on him. Which brings me to the mastery of characterization I had already admired so much in “Anna Karenina” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Tolstoy wrote deeply flawed characters who wrestle with their nature to try and do the right thing for themselves and the people they love. None of them are perfect, and each and every one of them are so real they might as well crawl out of the book, sit down next to you and tell you their stories – and that is just amazing.

-Tolstoy’s praise of intelligent women: he clearly thinks the ditsy ones are uninteresting, and his leading men always go for the clever ones (with the caveat that they seem to accidentally lose their intellect after marriage...). Even Marya, who does not give herself much credit, is smart enough to know when she’s being played for a fool, and how to deal with rather dire situations. In fact, the further I go into the story, the more I grew to appreciate Marya, whom I had originally dismissed as a religious nutcase. She isn’t: she just needed to get out of under her father’s thumb.

-Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky. I have always had a soft spot for crotchety old misanthropes, and this one uses gruffness to hide a tender father’s heart, and I often found him appalling and hilarious simultaneously. Besides, stuck in the middle of nowhere with Lise and mademoiselle Bourienne, wouldn’t you also get cranky? I know I would!

I disliked:

-Hélène Kuragina. Obviously. What a piece of work. She is ultimately the architect of her own downfall, and I felt sad for her near the end, but she is so selfish, manipulative and vicious. I don’t care who she sleeps with, I care about how miserable she makes everyone! Of course, she is using her sexuality, one of the very few powers women had back then, but her deliberate attempt to corrupt Natasha, out of spite towards her husband who admires the young girl so much, is simply egregious. She eventually forgets that despite being married to the richest man in Russia, some mistakes are just not easily forgiven. I mostly felt bad for Pierre, whose feelings for her were genuine at the beginning (yet even he knew something was not quite right with her), and who realized too late that he basically married a viper. Tolstoy is rather coy about her various escapades, which I confess I was slightly disappointed by: I would have enjoyed more sordid details about this notoriously depraved character.

-Natasha Rostova. What can I say, her irreducible bubbliness eventually got grating. I don’t tend to warm up to teenage girl characters, even in classics like this one. And what she did to Andrei, in my humble opinion, is unforgivable. I get it, girl: hormones are a thing, and Anatole is a hot scoundrel, but Jesus! Go sit in a snowbank or something, and calm down! It does get better after the burning of Moscow, when Marya’s calming influence finally gets her to simmer down a bit, but her sixteen-year-old delirium drove me insane. I think what I mostly hated about Natasha is that marriage turns her from a spontaneous and lively creature into a bossy matron almost overnight. This may be simply due to weird societal expectations of women at the time, but it’s no less annoying. Her personality simply vanishes! And you based that character on your wife, Leo? Safe to say her and I would not have been good friends.

-Nikolai Rostov. I know he’s young, ambitious and spoiled, but he could have definitely used a good throttling. If you are going to gamble your family fortune away with a psychopath, don’t complain when your parents pester you about making a marriage of interest! It’s called being a responsible adult, Nikki! Marya and Sonya are too good for you.

-Boris Drubetskoy. Slimy little social climbing creep, you gross me out.

-Amélie Bourienne: why is she there?! To save Marya from making a really bad decision, I know; I still wanted to chuck the book out the window every time she talked – but that might have knocked out an innocent pedestrian. She’s a composite of all the worse stereotypes about French women, and they should have left her behind to deal with Napoleon’s army at the Bolkonsky estate.

-Speaking of stereotypes, Tolstoy’s occasional bouts of patriotism get weird: the French are all petty snobs with inflated egos, he describes the Germans as a bunch of disorganized “sausage makers”… Jeez.

-Battle scenes and rambling passages about military strategy that last too long. Though to be fair, Tolstoy isn’t as long-winded as Hugo when it came to these (short chapters really help with that). I get why these events are part of the story, and I understand that my modern reader’s sensibility simply isn’t used to this. But gawd, I was happy when the fighting was over and done with and we could get back to talking about people! Tolstoy, who was a humanist and a pacifist, wanted to convey to his readers the barbaric and senseless nature of war, and that fighting for glory is an imbecilic notion: no one can say he didn’t reach his goal, but I guess there is no shortcut to make that point!

-Speaking of shortcuts, you can stop reading at Part 2 of the epilogue, because the rest is a long essay about the nature of history and how it was recorded, and how it should be recorded. It can be interesting, but by then, the actual story is over...

I was hoping that keeping the enormous book at home and reading it relatively slowly would mean “War & Peace” wouldn’t take over my life, but it kind of did anyway. I talked about it constantly as I was reading it, to my husband and to anyone who was silly enough to ask me what I was reading these days. I am not sure why Russian literature does this to me, but the exact same thing happened when I read “Doctor Zhivago” earlier this year (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I just became completely obsessed. I read up on Tolstoy, on the French Invasion, on the various adaptations of the book that have been brought to the screen (this article especially drew my attention: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/15... ); it truly became an experience. I knew I would enjoy “War & Peace” when I picked it up, but I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. It really got under my skin like few books have done before.

To Tolstoy, writing about the generation who fought off Napoleon is a bit like someone my age writing about their grandfather who fought in WWII, there is certainly a certain amount of idealization injected in the story that one needs to be aware of as you travel through this book, as these people were to Tolstoy what the so-called Greatest Generation is to us: we tend to overlook their less honorable moments and focus on their awesomeness. It certainly makes for more exciting storytelling! He also wanted to convey the idea that history is something that is both influenced and felt by everyone, not just the big names: his slightly outdated theories of historiography aside (feel free to skim his appendix on the subject), the idea of showing the impact of major social and political upheaval on the everyday life of a select group of people does shine a light on the fact that we are all affected by what goes on in the world, in small and big ways. In many instances, his musings about events having not one single cause but a multitude of small ones brought to mind teachings about co-dependent arising, which surprised and fascinated me.

As usual with massive classics like this one, they get a bad rep about being too long and dense, the language being too flowery and ornate. That doesn’t usually stop me, but I must say that the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of “War & Peace” I read was neither ponderously written or excessively florid: they seem to have worked very hard to keep Tolstoy’s style alive in their translation, with his use of repetition and rhythm, French passages embedded in the text (in context, this makes total sense), etc., and it was a genuine pleasure to read. This edition also included a helpful list of characters with full Russian names (including patronymics), nicknames and common French versions, so you can untangle who is who as you go through the story if you are not familiar with it. I still think a book this massive requires a good dose of patience, but dismissing its quality based on its age or page count would be a terrible mistake. It is not a perfect book, but it is nevertheless magnificent, very entertaining and important. I know this might sound difficult to believe, but I had a hard time putting it down, as my sore wrists can attest to. Everyone should read this at least once; I know I’ll be re-reading it, and that it has established a new benchmark as to what “amazing literature” means to me.



Too lazy to plow through over a thousand pages of epic Russian storytelling? The 6-part BBC series is very well acted, beautifully shot (with some amazing images having been conjured for some key parts of the story), and my darling James Norton’s glass-cutting jawline is quite lovely to look at (and will definitely put you on #teamAndrei). It’s no substitute for the book, if we’re honest (lack of inner monologue makes some events seem a little bit random at times), but it’s fun, pretty and covers all the important bits very faithfully. And yes, I know the 1956 film with Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer and Audrey Hepburn is a classic, but may the divine Miss Hepburn forgive me, I found it dated and too clean… It was clearly tailored for its audience, and tiptoed around the more debauched and sordid details – which I happen to enjoy.