Who is the hero? Can you skip the boring bits? How long will it take to read? A guide to a book that is not just great,it is the best novel ever written1 People change. The characters in War and Peace endure extreme experiences, and emerge at the cessation as quite different people. The miracle of the book is that the Natasha who falls in love with anyone and everyone in the ballrooms of the opening is recognisably the same woman who withdraws from society at the cessation.2 There is no hero and no heroine. This is the story of a group of people living within a society. Andrei Bolkonsky is not Tolstoy’s hero, or Natasha is not a romantic heroine. It forgives ideas of heroism,most beautifully in the final words any character speaks in the book, as Andreis son thinks of his father at the cessation of the First Epilogue. It understands and sympathises with those ideas but it excuses itself from repeating them. The book will try to understand why people behave as they attain, and it may build the best case possible for some queer actions,but it won’t build apologies for anyone and won’t pass a final judgment. Don’t expect to be able to predict what happens. Even the characters won’t be able to elaborate why they attain what they attain, perhaps until weeks or months later. The subject of the book is the wildness of opportunity, and how the world can be changed by one woman saying,for no particular reason that she can elaborate, “I have had so puny happiness in my life.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com