We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition
by Ayn Rand
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Read in February, 2008
This was Rand’s first novel, and it was likely the first novel to share firsthand knowledge of post-revolutionary USSR with the rest of the world. Although she lived through this period before re-locating to the US, this is a work of fiction. It is based around the actual living conditions and social attitudes of the time and follows a young woman who was formerly from a privileged family, but was now just a citizen like anyone else. Actually she was looked down upon by most other citizens a...more
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Read in May, 2005
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Instantly as visceral as her more popular later work, Rand's first novel set in early 20th-century communist Russia can really stir you up -- that is, if you support her views on individualism and passion for life, which I do. Like her other novels, the characters are boldly drawn archetypes, strong and obvious, minus extraneous detail that could be distracting from the philosophical ideal overlaying the plot. While Rand experienced first-hand much of the life in Russia she portrays in We the ...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
Anyone
Ayn Rand is a powerful writer but she does it so subtly that when something hits you, it really hits hard. In this book, her first, she tells the story of a young girl living in the communist state of the U.S.S.R. From a family considered "bourgeoise," the girl and those close to her come under the rule of the Red Party. The story tells not only of everyone's struggles, but of their relationships. Ayn Rand's philosophy, while not as honed in this book as it is in "Atlas Shrugged&q...more
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Read in April, 2008
I think Ayn Rand has an interesting philosophy on life (although not one I buy into) and I'm always impressed when people use fiction to reveal their life ideas. But... I really don't care for the way Ayn Rand writes. For the same reason I never got more than halfway through Atlas Shrugged, I had to stop myself from repeatedly throwing this book across the room (which I actually did at one point...)-- I just hate the characters. That's right. Every single one of them. I know we're supposed to ha...more
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Read in September, 2004
recommends it for:
anyone
This is one of my absolute favorite books. It's a love story, a coming of age novel, and the story of humanity triumphing over adversity. Young heroine Kira returns with her family to post-Bolshevik St. Petersburg to find their beloved city in shambles after the revolution, their home and all of their possessions commandeered by the Communist Party. Kira meets two men who will have great impact on her life in the coming years: fellow student (and Communist) Andrei, who she likes as a person de...more
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Read in January, 2003
Here's the thing: this book is fucking awesome. I'm a big fan of this theme - the whole "individual vs. the state" story. I think most of the books I've read in this vein were descended from "1984", but this is without doubt my favorite execution of the familiar thematic focus. This book was just so evocative for me; it did an incredible job of capturing the crushing force of living under a sociopolitical regime that cares not for the wants or needs of the individual. I f...more
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Read in November, 2007
My first foray into Ayn Rand (I have chosen to read her four major works in chronological order). The pages drip with her horror at the changes wrought by the Russian Revolution, and you cannot blame her for feeling the way she does. To watch as talented, successful, intelligent people were marginalized from society and education and the government and commerce in a sick and destructive pattern of retribution, only to find themselves replaced with people as callow and impecunious as they were ...more
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Read in March, 2008
I would easily call this the most brilliant of the Rand novels I've read if I knew that she had intentionally written in the irony of two driven, concientious, highly-principled characters sacrificing themselves to save one worthless, if somewhat Randian-minded, bastard of a man. This violates every principle of Rand's philosophy, but reflects the reality of life, no matter what your ideals may be. Love is a very strange, very irrational thing. Rand rants about the sacrifice of worthwhile ind...more
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Read in April, 2007
recommends it for:
Playas
Erotica at its best. We the Living is about a young lady with a brilliant mind and a ferocious appetite for sex. The book begins with Kira, a hot little harlot who might have been working at a strip joint (if they weren't so damn bourgeois!), as she seeks to find a nightlife for herself in her newly Soviet city of Petrograd. Posing as a prostitute in a red light district, she quickly forms her first life-long sexual bond with the first guy who comes along. He happens to be a philosopher, and tha...more
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Read in February, 2008
I just finished this book. My soul has never been so pained by a novel. Very few books affect me like this one did. I cannot explain other than it was so beautifully horrific. I knew very little about Communism or what the USSR was like. It caused so much anger and frustration in me, but the pain comes from the truths that it enlightens about humanity. We are creatures of pain and suffering and joy and and triumph. And no matter what pain we are dealt...we still have the capacity within ourselve...more
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Read in January, 2003
recommends it for:
those who are interested in what communism was like in the beginning
although she says it's not autobiographical, i can understand why Ayn Rand left the USSR and came to the USA. it also helps to understand her future works and strong feelings for the workings of capitalism. it must have been unbelievably difficult to live through the birth of communism. the entire past anyone had was, in effect, eliminated. all were now equal. and those that had been, shall we say, a bit less equal were enthralled by their new endowment and didn't hesitate to put their forme...more
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Read in September, 2007
This is said to be the most autobiographical of Ayn Rand's books. I HATED it. Pretty much everyone dies. At least everyone that you care about. Also I can't stand Rand's moral stance. Her main characters just follow the main chance, painfully and confusedly, leaving hurt and disillusion behind them as they go. Ugh. I have never been able to value a book for its message when the book tells an ugly story. I like to finish a book and feel uplifted. It's nice if I've been entertained and even nicer ...more
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Read in February, 2008
I enjoyed Ayn Rand's first stab at writing a full novel, this expose on life in glorious Soviet Russia that powerfully speaks against treasuring a government or ideal over the individual. I actually like Rand's philosophical messages here more than I do in her later and more complete works, though of course it's easier to argue against something horrible, as she does here, than it is to set up a positive philosophical system, as she attempts to do in later works. The plot is great and the writin...more
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Read in April, 2000
This is my favorite story by Rand although it has left less of an impression on me than her other books. This is probably because 'We the Living' feels much more realistic and serious than her other popular fictitious stories.
Unlike Rand's other works this story has three distinct protagonists with distinct characteristics (many of her other main characters are practically indistinguishable). Also, unlike her other novels I feel like these characters have real feelings, hopes and fears.
...more
Unlike Rand's other works this story has three distinct protagonists with distinct characteristics (many of her other main characters are practically indistinguishable). Also, unlike her other novels I feel like these characters have real feelings, hopes and fears.
...more
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Read in March, 2008
Not a very inspiring read..or atleast as much as Ayn Rand's other books like "The Romantic Manifesto", "The Fountainhead" and "The Atlas Shrugged". The books shows the formation of the philosophy of Ayn Rand and set in the conditions during the Russian Revolution. The conditions are harsh and the book shows how the central character "Kira" stands the test of time and ruthless conditions to keep her ideals and principles.
But the book is a drag...Ayn Ran...more
But the book is a drag...Ayn Ran...more
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this book i was not sure i would finish... save the explanation (left in friend's car in maryland etc)...
& i found it tough cause i know my russian history past 150 years
& the first 2/3rd were mostly communism bashing (which is ok but boring)
HOWEVER I ENDED UP FINISHING IT
& was lucky to have done so because it is as though one can see ms. rand carve out her style in the last 1/3 of the book. where the first two thirds are non-descript, the third is the archetyping of her...more
& i found it tough cause i know my russian history past 150 years
& the first 2/3rd were mostly communism bashing (which is ok but boring)
HOWEVER I ENDED UP FINISHING IT
& was lucky to have done so because it is as though one can see ms. rand carve out her style in the last 1/3 of the book. where the first two thirds are non-descript, the third is the archetyping of her...more
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The most auto-biographical and least lengthy of Rand's writing, We The Living is pretty awesome. This book may have played a huge role in my strong interest in Russia, as I first read it in second or third year of high school when I began to kick into a frenzy of Eastern European adoration. I loved this book. Adter being thwarted in all attempts to conquer Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead I was glad to find this, and imagine that I am infinitely more satisfied by the stor...more
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Read in August, 2006
Frequently dismayed by the automaton nature of Rand's characters such as The Fountainhead's Roark or Atlas Shrugged's Galt, I was fortunate enough to come across the delightfully grey and muddled characters of the love triangle: Kira, Andrei, and Leo. Rather than the seemingly pre-determined responses of Rand's perfectly black and white characters, in We the Living I found a greater depth of personality in each, conflicted and unbound by Objectivist dogma. This semi-autobiographical novel of R...more
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Read in January, 2007
I just finished this. I complained a lot, but the end, I actually liked it. It was sort of predictable, sort of crack-like...but it was still good. Sometimes I get tired of books about hot, crazy, rebellious females, and this would definitely be considered one of those, but it was still good. There's a lot of dumb, historically innacurate and embelleshed bullshit in it, but it also includes a lot of nice (and sure, profound) thoughts about individualism, and a beautiful ending. I am glad I read ...more
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.76 (2167 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.76 (2055 ratings) number of reviews: 190popular shelves
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quote
"She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little whole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity- did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible"
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