Matthew's review of War and Peace

War and Peace (Paperback) by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy, Henry Gifford (editor), Aylmer Maude (translator), Louise Maude (translator)
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Matthew's review
rating: 1 of 5 stars
status: Read in May, 2008

I sincerely doubt that I will ever read this book again, or ever feel any desire to. I can certainly see how and why it has secured its place as part of the canon, but I did not find the characters and their lives compelling enough to overcome the annoyance I felt with Tolstoy's personal vision of history and life in general.

There were moments when I came to care about what was going on in the book. I sympathized with Prince Andrey's broken heart and Pierre's search for meaning and I was genuinely interested in what choice Nikolay would make in regards to Sonya and Marya... some of the time. Prince Andrey recedes into the background in the latter half of the book, only to reappear briefly so that he can die a sudden, anticlimactic and boring death. Pierre meanders so aimlessly between various ideas and goals that I could only become frustrated with him and Nikolay is at times such a flat lifeless character that I could not care at all about him one way or the other. War an...more
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comments (showing 1-2 of 2) (2 new)

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Nophoto-m-25x33 If you now value more highly Atlas Shrugged - a novel with not one real human character and ideas that are sophomoric - one doubts that your view of War and Peace will improve.


message 2: by Sasha (new)

2948880 hear, hear! I read the entire book, even the musty epilogues, when I was a kid & hated it. Your review is almost exactly what I thought of the cursed thing. Even factoring in the jerkiness of the English translation, the book is dismal overall....the original flows a bit better but, as you say, failed to grip me.


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