Customer Reviews:
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 Do not be scared by its length it is a marvellous read. May 20, 1998
This is a beautifully written and translated book. Tolstoy knows how to tell a grand story weavng different characters and events together with the mastery of a quilter. The description of Pierre getting ready for his wedding is one of the most moving and funny in literature. This is a book that people often lie about having read so as not to appear uneducated and people who have are branded'egg heads' People should read it for pure pleasure and nothing else. I read it over 30 years ago while waiting for my first child to arrive and finished it the day after she was born.
Escape into your own romance: War and Peace October 13, 1997
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
Even Tolstoy refused to call it a book. Instead, think of it as virtual reality, 19th century style. Pursued at leisure, with time taken for dreams as well, War and Peace will transport you to Russia at the time of Napoleon, a time truly of love and hate, strength and suffering, life and death... That is Tolstoy genius, the facility to twine stories, moods, and scenes to make a distant time and country come alive. The characters live, they grow, they fascinate. Perhaps one can read and not be changed, but that same person would be one who could also love, and not change. A book to immerse in, to live in, to leave on the bookstand for months on end. A footnote: War and Peace has unfortunately slid into the same pit as Moby Dick, Silas Marner, Wuthering Heights, and everything that Dickens ever wrote. Ignore the company and read the book. Another note: Woody Allen said once that he had learned speed-reading and then read War and Peace on a plane flight from Los Angeles to New York. The verdict? "It's about Russia".
The greatest book ever written September 18, 1997
29 out of 31 found this review helpful
War and Peace has the reputation of the greatest book ever written, and it doesn't dissapoint. You don't so much read this book as live it. What Tolstoy has done so effectively is to give himself room to let the characters grow. You don't get a three page info-mercial about each character, but you get to know them from their thoughts and their interactions with other people. The result of this is that when something profound happens to a character, or within a character, this change reverberates deeply within the reader. The scope of this book is enourmous. Tolstoy takes you from romances, to battles, inside the mind of Napolean, and most of all death. War and Peace not only tells a great story, it raises interesting questions such as man's free-will and whether there's a god. It does so through the characters self doubt and trials, and results in an amazing and powerful book. If you havn't read it, don't be discouraged by the size, you MUST read it!
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