12 Comments

This week, I especially enjoyed learning and experiencing this (your words, Simon): “As he was working on War and Peace, Tolstoy wrote that he wanted to write stories that would make future generations ‘fall in love with life’ all over again. … What we get through reading War and Peace is something like a love letter to ‘the all of it’: ridiculous, wicked, good, thieves and angels.” Thank you for your insights, Simon. This week also reinforced the community aspect of this read with many of us sharing (or privately recalling) the bittersweet experience of caring for a loved one at the end of life. I thought of my mom, Gwen, who died at 75 in 2005 due to complications related to Alzheimer’s. I hope fellow readers who are currently supporting family members living through the same felt the loving support of our group. The wonder and power of a shared reading experience on full display this week. ❤️

Expand full comment
author

My thoughts to you and your mom. Seeing people respond to the story this week and share their own stories was very heartening. A love letter indeed!

Expand full comment

I loved what you wrote here - It really captured my whole experience reading W& P so far as well:

This week, I especially enjoyed learning and experiencing this (your words, Simon): “As he was working on War and Peace, Tolstoy wrote that he wanted to write stories that would make future generations ‘fall in love with life’ all over again. … What we get through reading War and Peace is something like a love letter to ‘the all of it’: ridiculous, wicked, good, thieves and angels.”

Expand full comment
May 26Liked by Simon Haisell

‘What we get through reading War and Peace is something like a love letter to ‘the all of it’: ridiculous, wicked, good, thieves and angels.’ Loved this, Simon, thank you 🥰

Expand full comment
author

Thanks Elsa. ❤️

Expand full comment
May 27Liked by Simon Haisell

I had to catch-up and read all of the last week in one sitting, which was not hard at all, of course. As always, I loved all the little insights we get, like Sonya's thoughts that she lacks imagination, Julie's request that Boris says all the necessary things, as deep down she knows he's marrying for money. How Pierre says what he feels, speaking straight from the heart of just knowing, without questioning what it is. The chapter on his rumination of dread of death hits close to home too and I highlighted two sections, it was as if Tolstoy had given words to my ruminations as well. I remember being a little girl and thinking about death and imagining the great black void when I went to bed at night and getting startled and so so scared that I had to get up and sit close to my mama or dad for a second, where it felt like the feeling I had was just a dream, but it wasn't.

Expand full comment
author

All these little insights. My three-year-old son has just started asking what "died" means. He's visiting his grandparents after a year and wants to know where the old dog has gone. We have not had this conversation before and he is only slightly interested, questioning. But it is a reminder of a lifelong relationship with death that begins about now, often with a dead pet or a dying elderly relative. Being a parent, you have to figure out how to put all these things back into words again.

Expand full comment

I keep hoping that Marya will have a happy outcome and find a husband worthy of her after the tormented years of living with her father. I had despaired of finishing War and Peace...the war chapters reminded me too much of our present times and I almost put the book aside. But today, I decided to give it another chance and jumped ahead to these chapters in my audiobook, so I will be caught up to our May 31st reading schedule by the end of the day. And thankfully, I am enjoying the book again. I thought Pierre would be one of my favorite characters...but I've gotten tired of his dissipation and navel gazing. Frankly, it's the lives of the women of War and Peace that keeps me reading (listening) and makes me want to re-read Anna Karenina next year.

Expand full comment
author

Congratulations! This book is all things, and although I'd never recommend skipping bits, you should always find things that speak to you where you are at this moment.

Expand full comment
May 27Liked by Simon Haisell

I’m warming up to both Nikolai and Pierre. Now I begin to see their full fledged complexities. One can be childish and mature, pretend to be frivolous but hide a deep torment. This book is marvellous.

Expand full comment

Playing catch up this week with everything but enjoyed listening to this as always. Having worked as a social worker fir 5 years with people who had a new diagnosis of dementia I suspected this is what the old count had and I feel for Mayra having to endure his changes and jibes on her own. It cannot be easy for and I feel her more than many others in the book deserves some happiness.

Expand full comment
May 29Liked by Simon Haisell

Really enjoyed this commentary, it draws together a-lot of the book, as well as recent chapters, since all of the different scenes and themes, like reality vs fantasy, true emotion vs simulated emotion, aging and death, Russian culture issues, etc. etc are explained, especially insights into characters’ struggles and faults. And miserable Pierre shines in his decision to “speak the truth even though it is not what Marya wants to hear” Poor Marya 😢

Expand full comment