A review by wishlissa
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

I’ve felt conflicted about War and Peace the entire time I’ve been reading it. I go back and forth between feeling like it’s technically masterful and boringly amateurish. And still, I find several tenants of Tolstoy’s main philosophy and strategy questionable. For one, his elevating of the peasants to a holy status feels like a means of social othering. It’s a way to view this class of people as different so that they can be treated differently than his peers. By calling them morally superior, he absolves himself of any moral issues in treating the group as others. And while I fundamentally agree that working in the fields under the sunshine and drinking with your friends afterwards is a fundamentally more natural and beneficial way to live life than to be wrapped up in the politics of high society and the intelligentsia, it’s hard to ignore aristocrat Tolstoy is keeping his peasants in their place by exalting their low status. Also, the most morally “upstanding” characters really lost me in this one. Mary in particular had me in the first half but WOW can I not justify her treatment of Natasha, nor Sonya, nor even her nephew/adopted son (she told an 11 year old she didn’t love him because he wanted to sleep in? And then when he had a total breakdown over the emotional extortion her response was 1. He must be upset he grieved me and 2. My husband will be so proud of me - ick??). Not that I expect great feminist thought from a 19th century male writer, but Natasha was such a better character for *most* of the book, and not only is her life at the end kind of offensive it’s just a horrible resolution for the character. She no longer sings? She lives exclusively for her husband and kids? Like before she was a little bit of a damsel a la Lucy Manette, but at least she had an arc. Not to mention the book started out as a project on the Decemberist Revolution, but ended up being about all the events preceding it. Between the revolution being reduced to a little bit of conversation at the end of the book + all of the marriages between main characters happening in a summary of the last seven years at the beginning of the “Christmas episode” of a first epilogue, it just feels like all of the resolution takes place off screen. But all that being said, War and Peace is still a project unlike any other. It may technically be greater than Anna Karenina, I still haven’t decided where I land on this, but Anna is definitely more concise, more enjoyable, and Tolstoy’s writing evolves significantly between the two. Guess it’s time for a reread.