Reviews

I made it as finish after I'd read study guide. I was definitely struggling with characters and story line. I couldn't bear myself the boredom while I was reading this book. I will read it again when my English proficiency is strongest.

Content Warnings

spenkevich's review against another edition

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5.0

The holidays always remind me of this book and the snow falling out my window onto the trees is the perfect backdrop for thinking about everything that goes on in Tolstoy's big epic. When I finished this book I found myself missing the characters as one would a friend. It's been a decade now and they haven't called, so maybe I should pick this up and visit them again. A pretty much perfect book, Tolstoy brings his narrative to life from so many angles and opinions that you feel like you've been there, lived with this characters and, in turn, become part of the the epic yourself.

matte_babygirl's review against another edition

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adventurous funny informative reflective relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

War and Peace is probably not what you were expecting unless you’ve learned a lot about the book before you’ve started. This was not some tremendous slog but actually a quite engrossing book that has its moments of feeling like a page turner. It manages to produce a very comprehensive retelling of the historical events surrounding Russia’s role in the Napoleonic Wars with a pinnacle of its invasion and burning of Moscow. The depth of the non-fictional parts of the book and their impressive accuracy for a book written in 1869, combined with the extremely detailed psychological and varied fictional character developments are truly what make it unique and worth of being called a masterpiece. It has a very interesting context, written at a time by “Count Lev Tolstoy” at a time when Russia has just finally emancipated its serfs having the same rights as american slaves and comprising 38pct of the population. While I was reading the book, I felt it failed to humanize anyone who was not a member of the nobility and didn’t add much of a critique to the brutal social hierarchy of Russia. Tolstoys perspective was clearly limited being a part of this nobility himself. Reading the critique of the novel afterwards it seems there was an intelligentsia and/or lefter wing of society who also felt at the time this was the book’s failing. Consequently, the depictions of the nobility as being real people with real faults also seemed to irk the conservative society at the time. Perhaps the mark of a great masterpiece is something that upsets the most amount of people whilst still influencing a profound awe.