War and Peace

I am very happy I read this, but phew am I also happy to be done with it. Because this book is heavy, because it took me about an hour to read only 30 pages and because Tolstoy needed to tell us a lot about his thoughts on history and historians.

But, there is so much good too :)
Tolstoy's descriptions of characters, how he goes so seamlessly into their heads and shows us what drives them to their sometimes heroic sometimes cowardice actions, is grand. Nikolai's reverie at seeing the tsar and pretty much falling in love with him and going into battle for him, was such a vivid and slightly scary description of extreme patriotism, and it stuck with me.

There's a lot of talk of the many many characters in W&P, but it wasn't as confusing as I feared it would be. After a while you figure out the central ones and realise it's not that important to keep track of all the generals and side characters. Also, a warning, it's not particularly easy to like the characters, with Prince Andrei being the only exception for me. Pierre with his ignorant naivete, getting pulled into the freemasonry, or Natasha the charming yet spoiled adolescent with her exuberance, are hard to root for. My compassion was more with the quiet women side characters, poor forgotten Sonya, and passive yet intelligent Marya.

The main narrative follows a group of connected characters and families through the years 1805-1812, from the high society events in Moscow and Petersburg to the battlefields in Europe, up until after Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The book is also interspersed with Tolstoy's musing on history. Which at the beginning are quite interesting in relation to his characters, as he sees humans as just cogs in the machine of history. From the smallest foot soldier to the highest generals - none of them truly in control of how a war is fought and won and lost. Even though historians assign the outcome of wars to the genius of the men in power, Tolstoy multiple times makes a point of highlighting how Napoleon's or Kutuzov's commands have little impact on outcomes. As fights are won and lost due to circumstances that have been in motion for a long while already. If only he wouldn't have quadrupled these thoughts on history towards the end of the book. It just made it a bit of an uphill battle to finish the book. (and I absolutely skipped the second epilogue)

Nice surprise: Tolstoy's funny. Occasionally the text has a very sharp and dry humour. Plus, I also enjoyed the bilingual nature of the book, with Russian high society conversing in French.