Daunting, but so worth it

TOLSTOY is one of the great writers of all time and War and Peace is a damn good piece of storytelling. I can recall reading the book for the first time when I was 16 or 17 and still at school. I was daunted by it and I did struggle at first. But I found myself gripped by the story.

I still have that original copy and, if I look back at the notes I scribbled in the back, I see I was struck by the novel’s themes of self-sacrifice, love and betrayal and its chilling foreshadowing of the future. The depiction of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia resonates so strongly with modern readers because history would repeat itself with Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

When I read it again, 35 years later, I derived even more enjoyment from it and I think that was down to maturity.

The great secret of the novel is not the drama of the battle scenes per se – it’s the fact there are characters who become your friends and you have to live with them. You can’t let them go until the last page.

War And Peace is not a threeday read, however, and tackling it is a commitment. You can’t just pick it up and quickly get into it like a minor detective novel.

Tolstoy fills the pages with dozens of brilliantly written characters and of course the panoply of Russian names can be a problem. It may be a case of going back and doublechecking who’s who, but a masterpiece like this is always worth the trouble. The reason the appeal of authors like Tolstoy and Dickens endures is not just because they are great writers – more importantly it’s because they are great storytellers. Great storytellers go on for ever.