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 What other authors leave in their heads January 2, 2009
Tolstoy goes far beyond just hitting the peaks of the story but also, writes at length on the hills, valleys, and everything in between (the material that other authors leave out). It is exhaustively detailed, down to the most mundane description of a character. Being that the high-points are few and far, I did have to trudge through this mammoth work. But what an opportunity to perfect, enhance and, give character to our own writings, through these wonderful, brilliant prose.
The story is played out in the present tense but sporadically, Tolstoy intervenes in short chapters with a second person history lesson on how the historians got things wrong (we discover history revisionists are nothing new) and a delving into the workings of the human mind. The epilogue is almost completely devoted to these assessments and can be read virtually on its own merit. This edition (translated by Garnett) is complete with helpful footnotes and endnotes.
Always with a spiritual force, Tolstoy captures well the cultural interactions and the Russian aristocrat families as they are caught between their fanciful lives and the looming French invasion, lead by the delusional Napolean. There was a feeling of contentment at the beginning, but that would soon be dispelled as Russia would be forced to wage unconditional war to push the French out. And it would be spirit that ultimately wins the war for Russia. Finally the story brings us to the aftermath and what befell the families.
Tolstoy reminds us, the varied perceptions of the war can only give us a partial understanding of the truth: We must dig deeper to understand. This straight-forward thinker finds a way to search through the clutter to critique the cause, and the why, and with it, generate a unique hindsight. For Tolstoy I believe it was more important to find the goodness and cheerfulness amongst the chaos, as if the war didn't exist----life moves on. Most enthralling of all is his examination of the contradiction, or is it conundrum, that arises between mans' free will and law through reasoning, that "if the will of every man were free, that is, if every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents", though "once admit that human life can be guided by reason, and all possibility of life is annihilated".
May the LORD bless you
Scott
 Great Book!! October 15, 2008
I am loving this book because it gives me something to keep my mind active during my down time!!
War and Upstairs-Downstairs September 25, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The nineteenth century was the era of the great novel. The twentieth may have seen far more, but 20th-Century novels are basically dispo-lit: throw-aways not expected to endure: published in paperback, and rightly. "Atlas Shrugged" (1951) was the last "great" novel.
The worst shortcoming of 19th-Century novelists was their tendency to get the train of story stalled on irrelevant sidetracks while they explored history and geography: Dickens & Dumas wandered afield, but divertingly, & Hugo strayed so far that many readers never got back. (You have to read the first quarter of "Notre Dame de Paris" before the plot begins.)
In W&P, Tolstoy carried it to the ultimate: the history is so intimately connected with the story of five aristocratic Russian families of the early 1800s that you cannot separate the background from the story. His masterly descriptions of the Austrian retreat from Vienna, and the battlefields of Austerlitz, Shevardino, and Borodino, are so intimately connected with the fortunes of the families that a reader cannot disentangle them.
Which would be wonderful if the family dramas were worth recording. But they are not. Sitcom-producers generally expect to produce 37 episodes per season, and if the show becomes popular enough to last 10 years, they find themselves scraping the bottom of the drama-barrel for the 369th episode. That is what W&P is: a sort of two-century-old Russian "Upstairs-Downstairs", that can never finish. It starts with the emotional involvements of the youngsters of five families: love (with betrayals, divorces, mesalliances, etc) and death (in childbirth, or by murder, suicide, duel, war, disease, or cruel neglect); and at the end, a new generation going in for the same silly mess all over again. Meaningless, pointless, and endless.
With most 19th-Century novelists we have historical description contaminating a brilliant plot; with Tolstoy we have the plot contaminating brilliant historical description. Tolstoy would be great if he had stuck to historical romance.
If you really like soaps, by all means plow your way through the war to find the peace; but if you love history, don't bother. You will never find the beautiful war in all those suds.
Andrew Charig 9/25/08
Great story, but terrible historical accuracy.... September 1, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
For me at first the novel started pretty good, and was quite one of the best I ever read, but from the half part of the book on after the french invasion of Russia, I was shocked to see so much historicals inaccuracies, and descriptions that seemed more and more propagandistic. For example his description of Napoleon, as a tiny egocentric man, that believes his own lies, and this is the secret from his victory, obviuosly seem more of Russian propaganda than anything else. And besides the Battle of Borodino, WAS A FRENCH VICTORY, and a Russian one, like Tolstoy try to makes us think....... Perhaps this is because of the time were he lived..... In summary buy it if you want to hear a great story about human nature. But take it as a fiction, as hardly anything Tolstoy says may be actually considered truth in a historical sense.
Rosemary Edmonds trans. of War and Peace August 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm suprised not to see anyone mention Rosemary Edmonds' translation of this masterful work. Her translation, published by Penguin Classics, is really quite good, and reads smoothly, and it seems accurate to what Tolstoy would have considered his message. I highly recommend this translation of War and Peace.
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