Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story

Spectacular book, like peering through an open window into upper level academe (confirming me in my decision not to climb through THAT window!) The premise, as expressed in the book's title and first lines, relieves the reader of any anxiety that this is going to end sadly. What a good way to set up enough tension to keep the story wound tight: have Tracy, our protagonist, meet George, her ideal partner, and then have him absent himself on spurious grounds; all along we know that a joyous reunion is inevitable.
Without George, Tracy is adorable, but with him, she's spectacular. "You think about mortality," she says to George during an early date. [Yes, I do; don't you?] "Personally, I like a little denial," she continues. "I concede I have a bladder; it's made itself evident. I suspect, though, that I might not have a liver -- it's never so much as cleared its throat. I certainly don't have islets of Langerhans." A couple of paragraphs on, a bit of internal dialogue, "The beauty of life is in denying mortality, not arranging your life around it. Soaring has everything to do with amnesia about the ground. Why shouldn't we do it as long as possible?" [p177]
Seen through the novel's window, academic politics, and our heroine's honesty, add to the tension in a fascinating way, keeping Tracy busy while George is away: a senior colleague's life is scrambled, and threatens Tracy's bid for tenure. There's tension between tradition, in the form of elderly, inflexible professors, and the reality of younger staff in tune with a younger generation of students -- the classic tension in a university between providing a good education to students and a secure place for professors. Stubbornly introspective, our Tracy is constantly examining and criticizing herself; we see this story as much more than merely a love story.
George returns; a difficult reunion: "Don't think it's easy. We stumble, clash, retreat. Laughter resurfaces slowly. Anger surges and had to be pried loose. Love may be my religion, but I am (he was right) irretrievably Jewish. And skepticism is part of the believer's duty." [p455]
An engagement ring winds the tension, setting Tracy off. Does wearing it mark her as George's territory? "Feminism taught me to critique the world, but not how to live in it. Relationships are sacrifice, my aunt Rona mentions casually at the end of a phone conversation; and I set down the receiver and glare at my office bookcase, outraged: no one in years of women's studies colloquia ever mentioned this. You cannot mention feminism and voluntary personal sacrifice in the same sentence. It's against the law. Feminism has been too busy rebounding from millennia of oppression and establishing our right to be all we can be to acknowledge that every human being -- every human being who wants to live in relationship to others -- gives up some portion of her wide-open vista." Finally, she decides to wear the ring.
A little later, hurtling with George down a highway away from academic disappointment, an epiphany: "People misunderstand happiness. They think it's the absence of trouble. That's not happiness, that's luck. Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble. No two people have the same trouble, or the same way of metabolizing it. Q.E.D.: No two people are happy in the same way. Even Tolstoy was afraid to admit this, and I don't blame him. Every day, people smarter than I, wallow in in safe tragedy and pessimism, shying from what really takes guts: recognizing how much courage and labor happiness demands." [p475] Up in the corner of my tablet (I'm reading this on Hoopla) there could be a flashing notification: Author's message! Authors message!
Rachel -- the intimacy of this book lets me feel I'm on a first name basis with the author -- made me laugh out loud several times with wit, unexpected insight, simple delight in a perfect turn of a phrase. This book is a little masterpiece, and one of my best ten all-time books.

A witty, smart and well written book. Loved the academic settings and the power struggles within, loved the observations about the role of books and literature in one's life. In all this, love was supposed to enter the stage as something complex, beautiful and mysterious and not in the shape of an annoying idiot of a man who's obsessed with all the most mundane things, including religion.
Tragic as it may seem, after pages and pages where the heroine of this book affirms her intelligence, integrity and strength, she falls pray of every possible clichè in the history of cheap chick lit.
Quite good for the style and premise, so-so for the rather pitiful ending.

Wow, I can’t believe that the author wrote The Weight of Ink, a book that I loved. I did appreciate the description and insight into academic departments and the absurd politics that go on therein and the odd characters. The exception to that was the storyline about a seriously mentally I’ll dissertator, which started well and then went off the rails IMHO. I really disliked the romantic story line and found it annoying.

Wow, I liked this book a lot. And as I was reading it I kept saying, "Dude, this is *such* a chick book, why are you still reading it?" Maybe 15 years of marriage has made me susceptible to a story laced with insights about relationships.

I liked this book. It's not your average read; it has some surprises. There were times I wanted to impose my own preferences on the heroine, or shout at her, or shake her, but we all have to live with our own realities, and I enjoyed reading her reality.

Deep and thoughtful. Love the classics references

I enjoyed reading this, but the ending was very disappointing. I get what Kadish was trying to say about love and life being more complicated than portrayed in the lit, but some things aren’t THAT complicated.

Not quite what I expected, but is a pretty accurate depiction of the stresses, politics, and workings of an academic English department at a university.

I listened to the audiobook and wished that the narrator knew how to pronounce “prosody.”