War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

IS IT BIG? Bet your a$$. At 1,344 + xli pp., my copy gave me a lot of tome for my wampum.

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? Russia.

IT'S BORING, ISN'T IT? Not really, in fact a lot of it is pretty gripping, esp. the battle scenes, some of whose gory details will turn your stomach. And there's a lot of human interest centred around the different families. (Some of these scenes are pure soap.) And in quite a few places it's funny (honest).

On the other hand... Ol' Leo wanders off not infrequently into philosophical musings on the nature of war, free will, inevitablity etc. etc., which might get your peepers drooping if philosophy isn't your cup of tea. I found most of them pretty interesting, but you could easily skip them and get on with the swashbuckling stuff and family dramas.

IS IT THE GREATEST NOVEL OF ALL TIME? Nah. It's not even Tolstoy's greatest novel. (That oscar goes to "Anna Karenina".) But you can't fail to marvel at the time and research that went into it, plus he sure can tell a story.

SHOULD I READ IT, THEN? Depends. If big epics on the grand scale are what floats your boat, then sure. If you're into family dramas and high society, ditto. If you want to find out about it for yourself (that was my excuse), go ahead. But if you want to read it just so you can say you've read it you might not get very far.

SO WHAT'S YOUR VERDICT? 3½ / 5. I'll remember it for two things: [i] as one of the great anti-war novels (Hitler should have read it; some of the scenes are straight out of Operation Barbarossa) and [ii] for the stifling, suffocating formality of high society life. Thank God I wasn't born into *that*.

And so it's back to more easily digestable fare for the rest of the year. Right now I'm off down the mean streets of Edinburgh with the tartan James Ellroy. Catch you later.