War and Peace

By Leo Tolstoy

(A note from Keziah— I’m so pleased to share a guest post by Cecily Nera! Thank you so much for your insightful review and for being on board as a guest poster.)

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War and Peace is a difficult book to classify; even Tolstoy wasn’t sure what category to put it in. However, I think it’s best described as a novel, despite the philosophical essays squeezed into the last half of the book. The plot revolves around the lives of a handful of the Russian nobility as they grow and change during one of the greatest European conflicts of their time.

Despite being set in the 1800s, I have rarely encountered a book with characters that I understood more easily than those in War and Peace. From the first chapter, I was enamored. Tolstoy’s characters are not saints, nor are they generally heroes, however much they’d like to be. The dry narration style serves to reveal their humanity even further: their intrinsic selfishness, pride, and hesitation is on full display. Even so, few of the characters are unlikable; they’re simply, and rather amusingly, imperfect.

“He prayed with that feeling of passion and compunction with which men pray in moments of intense emotion due to trivial causes.”

“Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.”

“Nokolenka, what a delightful dog Trunila is! He knew me,” said Natasha of her favorite dog.

“In the first place, Trunila’s not a dog, but a wolf-hound,” thought Nikolay.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Most of the characters begin the story with great aspirations and ideals, which, as the story progresses, gradually soften into real wisdom that Tolstoy expresses in delightfully quotable passages. He portrays both youthful idealism and adult disillusionment with extreme accuracy. And, because the story spans roughly fifteen years, we have the opportunity to see almost every stage of life with great detail. We can also observe the way different characters react to similar experiences, such as when close friends Andrei and Pierre both decide to drastically change their lifestyle about a third of the way through the book. One of them decides to live in seclusion, and the other tries to benefit the entire world. The ensuing ideological conflict provides insights that can be pondered for years.

War and Peace is also historical fiction, and Tolstoy treats grand history the same way he treats ordinary life; without any sentimentality. Much of the plot revolves around Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and whenever Napoleon appears in a scene, Tolstoy takes every opportunity to suggest he wasn’t quite as remarkable as the world thought. Of course, he may be somewhat biased, but I found the characterization consistent with what I’ve read about Napoleon in the past.

“It was evident that it had long been Napoleon’s conviction that no possibility existed of his making mistakes. To his mind all he did was good, not because it was in harmony with any preconceived notion of good or bad, but simply because it was he who did it.”

Although this isn’t a simple book, there are only a few main characters, and once you know those names, it’s relatively easy to follow along. It’s still normal to be somewhat lost for the first hundred or so pages, though. Knowing the historical background will enhance your enjoyment of the book, however you can pick up the gist of it through the dialogue, and fill in the gaps later, if you want. No matter how prepared you are, I’d recommend giving it a try. War and Peace is a diverse book with appeal to lovers of history, wit, and philosophy; it may even change the way you look at those subjects for a long time.

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Thanks for reading!