Review: War and Peace

I do not think War and Peace is a novel. If War and Peace is, in fact, a history text on the Russian perspective of the Napoleonic Wars, using fictional characters to portray a range of daily realities that formed part of the fabric of this time period, then it does its work, and it may be the most interesting history text on the Napoleonic Wars ever written. But if I am meant to see War and Peace as a novel--as a work of fiction whose task is to tell a story about its characters--I found it failure.

Its failure is more frustrating because it is plainly the work of a literary genius. Tolstoy may be the best writer I have ever read for comprehending and capturing the way human beings function psychologically. He creates a wide range of characters--young and old, extroverted, introverted, merry, severe, emotional, rational, capricious, conscientious, etc.--all of whom think and behave in ways exactly plausible for who they are and yet surprising and complex and evolving. And he depicts many of these experiences, external and internal, with a phenomenal eye for detail, nuance, strangeness, idiosyncrasy, and the stream of consciousness of human thought and feeling. So what's the problem?

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