Customer Reviews:
 Resurrection April 15, 2008
I'm only half way through this but I am just so surprised by it that I thought I'd write something.
It's true that in Resurrection, the novelist's over-riding intent is to portray certain aspects of Russian society- class inequality, a corrupt and absurd legal institute, the emptiness of religious practise- in a powerfully interrogative and accusatory fashion, often at the cost of narrative and characterisation. There are no scenes (as yet) as beautiful as, say, Natasha and Nikolai Rostov remembering their childhood in War and Peace, or Levin in the fields with his serfs in Anna Karenina. Nekhlyudov, Resurrection's protagonist, spends the novel in the grip of a moral paroxysm that leads him to scrutinise the idleness and depravity of his lauded lifestly, and in this portrayal there is little of Tolstoy's usual concern for the minutae of personality that make his other characters so wonderfully compelling.
All of this said, the scrutiny, compassion, anger and precision of this novel is staggering, shocking and utterly riveting. As a masterwork of narrative literature it is, in my opinion, some way short of Toltoy's two more famous epics but it is, nevertheless, an exceptionally forceful work.
(While writing this a (perhaps) suitable companion-piece to Resurrection occured to me- The Devils, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: that too has a narrative that is occasionally sublimated by its creator's over-riding wish to portray a certain aspect of Russian life in the most serious and critical light).
One of the greatest novels ever written March 26, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A superb vision of life in 19th-century Russia, it exposes the hypocrisies of state, property and law in an unrivalled manner. Brilliantly written.
Masterwork. August 21, 2000
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
The 'Ressurection' came into my hands after having read virtually everything else by Tolstoy, and for it's lack of reputation caught me entirely by surprise. Here we find Tolstoy the great storyteller, a genius whose strong personality sometimes prevents him from understanding his characters. It is a great paradox that his would be the great literary heroines, like Anna Karenina, when it is in the characterization of women that a careful reader can notice a lack of intimate knowledge and real understanding. Yet in the background there is always a man, crucified between moral corectness and a hipocrisical society, each of those men a part of Tolstoy himself, and it is exactly in the deep, cruelly exact self-portrait that his mastery is undisputed. 'Ressurection' features a female character strong enough to carry a novel; yet it is the feeble male character that occupies our attention as we watch him shed the protection offered by the norms of his class, to search for redemption, or resurrection. It is a novel hard and unfrilled, yet there is something in its shattering sincerity, in the drama of its gestures, that makes it truly great. Together with 'War and Peace' and a short novel, 'Father Sergei', it is to be considered the pinnacle of Tolstoy's opus.
 absorbing April 9, 2000
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
A beautifully decriptive story set in Russia 100 years ago. Even the briefest characters are given personality and life, and also much humour. It took me several weeks to read the book, but it is so well written I found myself remembering exactly where i left the story, and never had to re-read any of it. Probably the first book I have ever read in which I can remember the story from start to finish. A proper 'old fashioned' tale, but with many thoughts and ideas which are equally relevant in todays society.
A beautifully descriptive and yet somehow confused book August 6, 1999
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book is an epic story written towards the end of Tolstoy's life. Although the tale of two ex lovers going through a spiritual renewal together is moving, Tolstoy (whose self portrait lies in the protagonist Nekhlyudov) seems to be in a state of denial as to the true motives behind his hero's redemption. The book is higly readable though slightly repetitive at times and is interlaced with the genius of Tolstoy's descriptive powers and observations of mankind.
|
