War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Before you consider reading War and Peace, there are three things you need to be aware of.
The first thing is that War and Peace is not a plot-driven novel but a character-driven book. This means that if you are not interested in the characters, you will not enjoy this book. My second point is that throughout the novel, Tolstoy writes several asides where he espouses his theories on history and why events happen. I personally did not enjoy these asides and always struggled to keep reading them. I still like the book overall. The third and last point before I go into more detail about my thoughts on the book is that War and Peace is a long novel and is not a good choice if you want a short-term read.
War and Peace is set during the Napoleonic Wars and follows a large cast of characters as they live their lives. The major characters are Pierre Bezukhov, the Rostov family, and the Bolkonsky family. What the book does well is allow the characters to have lives and concerns that are separate from the war. The large cast is spread out all over Russia, creating a world that feels very lived in and real. The war part of the novel is only a small section, mainly at the end of the book. I would describe most of War and Peace as being more like Jane Eyre and Jane Austen's works but with some war and philosophy.
Even for the time it was written, Leo Tolstoy had an outdated view on serfdom, and this view has become increasingly archaic over time.
The epilogue is split into two different parts. The first part describes the lives of the characters after the war. I found this part boring, and some of the depictions of married life do not align with our modern views of marriage. The second part of the epilogue is an essay on how much freedom people truly have to act within their lives. I enjoyed this, but I personally enjoy reading philosophy and political theory. If neither of these appeal to you, I would recommend skipping the epilogue. I had great pleasure reading most of the novel, but parts of the book I found very difficult.
What I liked about the book: The characters were well-realised, and the book did a good job of conveying what they were feeling and thinking. The characters themselves were not perfect and could be quite flawed. There are a lot of characters, and many of them are referred to by multiple different names. This also leads to another issue, which is that several different characters share the same name as each other. I also liked the mini essay Tolstoy wrote in the epilogue, where he explains his philosophy on freedom and destiny.
I personally enjoyed this book, but as mentioned above, it does have its flaws.
Matthew O
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