Life at both ends
War and Peace Week 2: Book 1 Part 1 Chapters 8 – 14
Welcome to Week 2 of War and Peace 2024
Last week, I polled readers to see how many are joining us for War and Peace, a chapter a day, in 2024. There are currently over 1,600 people taking part, with subscribers from 100 countries. Thank you for taking up the challenge, and I hope you enjoy both the book and the community this is coming together around this reading experience.
Everything you need on this journey will appear on the main War and Peace page of Footnotes and Tangents. There is a reading schedule that links through to daily chat threads for each chapter. And there is a list of weekly updates.
And there are also plot summaries for each character to help you keep track of the hundreds of characters in this book. This is a unique resource created by me for this read-along so I hope you find it useful.
Following your feedback, I have decided to put out these weekly updates on Sundays. You can find the full list of weekly posts here.
All this comes to you for free from my desk in Newcastle, England. Sadly though, life isn’t free. So, like Anna Mikhailova, with my best expression of profound sorrow, I’d like to emotionally blackmail you into becoming a paying subscriber. As a supporter, you win by eternal gratitude and a little extra post called All Tolstoy’s Parties, a review of every festive moment in War and Peace.
This is a long post and may get clipped by your email provider. It is best viewed online here.
This week’s characters
Read chapter-by-chapter plot summaries for all the main characters mentioned this week:
Countess Rostova • Julie Karagina • Natasha Rostova • Count Rostov • Marya Karagina • Boris Drubetskoy • Nikolai Rostov • Sonya • Petya Rostov • Anna Mikhailovna • Vera Rostova • Berg • Prince Vasili • Count Bezukhov • Pierre • Catiche
This week’s theme: Life at both ends
This was a week of contrasts. We exchanged the Petersburg parties for the reception rooms of Moscow. Two houses: one full of youthful promise and children growing up. The other: a vulturous vigil around the bed of a dying man.
Tolstoy is telling us the size of this story. We will see all of life, from beginning to end. And the full spectrum of human experience and character. From the guarded Prince Vasili to the overly generous Count Rostov. From cool Boris to Calamity Pierre.
And this week, we got our first glimpse of the “fireball” Natasha, “a regular volcano”. And her hot-headed brother Nikolai. Big characters in this big story.
But the beauty of a chapter-a-day is we have plenty of time to appreciate the rich cast of minor characters. There are no obvious heroes and villains in War and Peace, but many complex, flawed and intriguing players in a recognisably mesmerising dance of life and death.
This week’s poll: Which translation are you reading?
We have many people reading in languages other than English. But if you are reading in English, let us know which translation you are using. I am afraid this poll only allows up to five options, so I have listed the four most popular.
This week’s story
Clicking on the chapter headings takes you to the chat thread for each chapter.
Chapter 8
Enter the younger generation! Natasha, Nikolai, Boris, Sonya and Petya. We learn that the eldest son, Nikolai, has left university to go and fight in the war. His father had a nice safe job for him lined up in the Archive Department. But the young man says he is “not a diplomat nor a government clerk. I don’t know how to hide what I feel.”
Chapter 9
We learn that Nikolai and Sonya are “kissing cousins”. And the Rostovs talk about how they were too strict with Vera and are too lenient with Natasha.
Chapter 10
There is kissing in the conservatory. Here are two very different couples: an overly earnest love between Nikolai and Sonya. And a dreaming playful Natasha planting a kiss on the calm and cautious Boris, securing a doubtful promise to ask for her hand in four years’ time.
Nikolai says pointedly that he is no “diplomat”. His sister Natasha scolds her sweetheart Boris, calling him a “diplomat”. I love how the children have developed their own language to talk about each other. Tolstoy writes:
She used the word ‘diplomat’, which was just then much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.
And it’s a word for us to keep in mind as we read on. There are characters who hide their emotions and those who cannot. There are many kinds of battlefields in this book, and some characters play the role of warlike generals, and some are peacekeeping diplomats.
The painting above is of Stéphanie Félicité, or Madame de Genlis – Nikolai’s nickname for Vera. She was a French writer of romance novels and theories on the education of children. And she is clearly a byword among the children for boring respectability.
We will catch a rather unlikely character reading one of her novels much later in the story.
Chapter 11
Back in the drawing room, the countess has a tête-à-tête with her childhood friend, Anna Mikhailovna. Boris’s mother looks like she is going to get some money out of her friend, and has her eye on Count Bezukhov’s fortune. Meanwhile, Vera enamours herself to no one, unwanted by either the adults or the children.
What do you think about Vera Rostova?
There has been a lot of conversation about her in the group chat this week. Many readers can relate to her as the eldest child, who has to watch her parents indulging her younger siblings.
Her mother is especially cruel to her. And the painful irony is that mother and daughter are alike in many ways. Both have a sharp tongue and a streak of spite that contrasts with the rest of the family. Nikolai, Natasha and Petya take after their father in various ways, exclaiming that everything is “splendid” or “capital”, even when it is indisputably not.
Chapter 12
A virtuoso performance from Anna Mikhailovna as she attempts to get her foot in the door to see the dying Count Bezukhov. Prince Vasili is barring her way, but for how long? And is the scheming Vasili Kuragin also keeping Pierre away from his father’s bedside?
Chapter 13
Yes, Prince Vasili has forbidden Pierre from seeing his father. So, he spends his time pretending to be Napoleon in his room. He meets Boris, who he at first doesn’t recognise, but decides must be a “splendid fellow”.
Notice in this chapter, how Boris does everything quietly, deliberately and with a smile. His thoughts are all tucked away neatly in his head. In contrast, Pierre’s mind is all over the place, and he can’t hide it:
Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.
I love that line. Pierre asks Boris about the Boulogne expedition. Between 1803 and 1805, Napoleon was making preparations to invade England. 200,000 troops were assembled on the north coast, with a flotilla of barges to carry them across. Napoleon even considered sending troops across the channel by hot air balloon.
The planned invasion was paid for by the Louisiana Purchase, the 1803 sale of France’s North American territories to the United States. Ironically, the US took out a loan with a British bank to help make this purchase. Had the invasion taken place, it would have been indirectly paid for by a London bank.
But it was not to be. It is August 1805, and as Pierre is wondering about its chances of success, the army at Boulogne is about to be redirected east to destroy the Austrian armies before Russian forces can come to their aid.
Chapter 14
Countess Rostova asks her husband for money for her friend Anna Mikhailovna. He too easily gives it to her, for “everything is possible”. Everything? Despite the artifice and gentle manipulation, there is a genuine tenderness between husband and wife, and the childhood friends.
Theme: Friendship
Anna Mikhailovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were kind-hearted, and because they—friends from childhood—had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over … But those tears were pleasant to them both.
Tolstoy is always confounding the reader and challenging our haste to rush to judgment. It would be easy to characterise Anna Mikhailovna as an insincere friend, prepared to deceive and manipulate others to get what she wants. But while this may be true, Tolstoy shows us that they are also “kind-hearted” childhood friends with a shared melancholy about money and their faded youth.
Both things can be true, and people can be kind and cruel at the same time. This is an idea Tolstoy will return to time and again throughout War and Peace.
Bonus: All Tolstoy’s parties
The Footnotes and Tangents entertainment correspondent has left Petersburg high society for Moscow. What will he make of the rustling Rostovs? Paying subscribers can find out…
Readers of War and Peace
I am delighted to say there are quite a few people writing their own posts about this read-along. So here are a few from the last couple of weeks.
has taken on the splendidly ambitious project of recording his own reading of War and Peace, a chapter-a-day. You can follow his YouTube channel or subscribe to his Substack: has written about Caroline Riviere, the woman on the front page of the Penguin Classic edition of War and Peace: has been using the read-along as a writing prompt to journal about life:
And
has been using War and Peace to learn Russian, focusing on five words from each chapter:
Let me know if you have a creative project linked to the read-along, and if you like, I can share it with the rest of our readers in future posts.
Character of the week: Anna Mikhailovna
‘If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,’ said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, ‘I know his character: noble, upright … but you see he has no one with him except the young princesses … They are still young …’ She bent her head and continued in a whisper: ‘Has he perfomred his final duty, Prince? How priceless are these last moments! It can make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is so ill. We women, Prince,’ and she smiled tenderly, ‘always know how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it may be for me. I am used to suffering.’
Give Anna an Oscar! She’s been endlessly entertaining this week, with her first-rate performances of “profound sorrow” and creative accounts of her closeness to people in power. Her son’s smile suggests he’s seen it all before, but we get front-row seats in this stellar show from one of the most formidable women in Russia.
Where do you stand with Anna Mikhailovna? Love her or loathe her?
I admire her. An unspecified lawsuit appears to have left her penniless. She seems to have no relatives she can count on, and a son she loves and cares for. She may be envious of rich Rostovs and Bezukhovs and shameless in her forceful insincerity. But she is using what weapons she has in a world that has stacked everything against her.
That’s all from me this week. Thank you for reading and taking part. If you have any questions, thoughts or ideas about this week, join us for a discussion in the comments. And if you haven’t already done so, please consider becoming a paying subscriber so that I can keep creating these resources for slow and creative and curious readers. Thank you.
Anna Mikhailnova is the master of getting things done! Talk about a competent woman who would go to the ends of the earth and endure social isolation and humiliation for her son. She’s the kind of character I wouldn’t want to spend prolonged amounts of time with but can truly admire from a distance.
As for Vera, I empathize with her (eldest daughter here). Navigating the in-between of being too young and immature to be an adult but too old and serious to be a child is the hardest thing. I hope the remaining thirteen-hundred pages hold some love for her!
I’m going to settle down and read this with a cup of tea later. Every day with this book is a gift and I will never stop thanking you for creating such a wonderful space, Simon. 🧡