The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Title: The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Number of pages: 106

Started: 26 June 2010

Finished: 27 June 2010

Opening words:

In the large Law Court building, during an adjournment of the Melvinsky trial, the members of the bench and the Public Prosecutor had come together in the office of Ivan Yegorovich Shebek, and the conversation touched on the celebrated Krasovsky case. Fyodor Vasilyevich argued vehemently that it was beyond their jurisdiction, Ivan Yegorovich had his own view and was sticking to it, while Pyotr Ivanovich, who had kept out of the discussion at the outset and was still not contributing, was perusing a copy of The Gazette which had just been delivered.

‘Gentlemen!’ he said. ‘Ivan Ilyich is dead.’

‘Is he really?’

‘Here you are. Read it yourself,’ he said to Fyodor Vasilyevich, handing him the paper, fresh off the press and still smelling.

There was an announcement within a black border: ‘It is with profound sorrow that Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina informs family and friends that her beloved husband, Ivan Ilyich Golovin, Member of the Court of Justice, passed away on the 4th of February this year, 1882. The funeral will take place on Friday at 1 p.m.’

Read a longer extract here.

Plot summary:

Ivan Ilyich is wasting away. He lies alone, dosed up on opium and deceived by doctors, haunted by memories and regrets. His friends come to see him, their faces masks of concern. His faithful servant tends to his every need. But as he forces down false remedies and listens to empty promises, Ivan grows aware of one terrible truth.

His wife and his children are not awaiting his recovery.

They are waiting for him to die ...

What I thought:

This was a very readable book. It started in good humour, but took on more sober tones. It was ultimately a book about death, as the title suggests, but was not depressing – it was more of a reflection on life, and a way of seeing our place in it.

This book is well worth a read, and at just over 100 pages, you can say that you have read a Tolstoy book in under two hours. Let this book see if it can tempt you to read some of his rather longer tomes.

The Master and Margarita

Title: The Master and Margarita

Author: Mikhail Bulgakov

Number of pages: 564

Started: 7 February 2010

Finished: 17 February 2010

Opening words:

At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers and black sneakers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of the board of one of the major Moscow literary associations, called Massolit for short, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, who wrote under the pseudonym of Homeless.


Read a longer extract here.

Plot summary:

The devil comes to Moscow wearing a fancy suit. With his disorderly band of accomplices - including a demonic, gun-toting tomcat - he immediately begins to create havoc.

Disappearances, destruction and death spread through the city like wildfire and Margarita discovers that her lover has vanished in the chaos. Making a bargain with the devil, she decides to try a little black magic of her own to save the man she loves ...

Read a major analysis of the book (by an “amateur”) here

What I thought:

This book wasn’t really my kind of read. I didn’t really get into the plot very well and found it all a bit odd and unsatisfying. This might, in part, be down to the translation, particularly as there seems to be much debate about which of the many translation is “best”. Perhaps if I had read another version, I might have found it to be a different read. But, for me, I didn’t really find the book flowed, I thought the plot was odd and a bit to surreal in some places for my liking and I just didn’t find the book very coherent. Not a book that I would particularly recommend.

Lolita

Title: Lolita

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Number of pages: 309

Started: 31 January 2010

Finished: 6 February 2010

Opening words:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

Read the opening chapters of the book here.

Plot summary:

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, fastidious college professor. He also likes little girls. And none more so than Lolita, who he’ll do anything to possess. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? …Or is he all of these?

What I thought:

This was an interesting read and clearly one that is affected by the narrator telling the story. Humbert Humbert is the narrator and the protagonist with a liking for young girls. It’s a controversial story and one that some might feel rather uncomfortable with, not just because of the storyline itself, but because of the narrators explanations and, perhaps, because he might draw some emotion (about him as a person) other than abhorrence at times. It’s a challenging concept for a book and it starts with a foreword (that you should read before you read the rest of the book, as it is part of the plot) which gives a very strong indication of where things will end up. But the story takes some interesting paths to reach its conclusion and you see the ‘morality’ of Humbert and how the standards that he applies to other are not necessarily the same as he applies to himself.

Nabokov was a Russian, and this book, which was written in English, was an experiment in using the English language to its full extent – although he does throw in quite a lot of French too. The book at times seems to get caught up in using the most obscure words that can be found to convey the message, which does nit always enhance the book. But as a work of literature it is also a challenging read, but perfectly readable.

Did I enjoy the book? It is hard to say. I thought it was a clever story in its own way and one that was challenging on a number of levels, but I find it hard to be enthusiastic about a book that involves a subject of this nature.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Title: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Number of pages: 143

Started: 26 January 2009

Finished: 27 January 2009

Opening words:

As usual, at five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters. The intermittent sound barely penetrated the windowpanes on which the frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as they'd begun. It was cold outside, and the camp-guard was reluctant to go on beating out the reveille for long.

Read an analysis of the book here

Plot summary:

The story of a typical day in a Stalinist labour camp as experienced by prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

What I thought:

This was a sombre but kind of hopeful read. You learn what makes a good or a bad day and realise that it is possibly very different than what we are used to.

This book is about those imprisoned in Stalinist camps and was released under Lenin’s regime to show that it was a new way ahead and Russia was casting off that past. These people were imprisoned for a whole range of reasons, some of them political, but there was no sense of like minded people coming together debating ideas or fomenting dissent. There was no time or inclination to do such things because productivity and work was what they had to focus on and having enough to eat and keeping warm – for years on end with sentences that could just be extended on a whim.

A sobering book, but somehow hopeful.

War and Peace

Title: War and Peace

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Number of pages: 1358

Started: 21 September 2008

Finished: 29 October 2008

Opening words:

'Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now nothing more than estates taken over by the Buonaparte family. No, I give you fair warning. If you won't say this means war, if you will allow yourself to condone all the ghastly atrocities perpetrated by that Antichrist - yes, that's what I think he is - I shall disown you. You're no friend of mine - not the "faithful slave" you claim to be... But how are you? How are you keeping? I can see I'm intimidating you. Do sit down and talk to me.'

These words were spoken (in French) one evening in July 1805 by the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honour and confidante of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna, as she welcomed the first person to arrive at her soirée, Prince Vasily Kuragin, a man of high rank and influence.

Plot summary:

Considered by many to the greatest novel ever written, Tolstoy's masterpiece is a story of family life set against the backdrop of war. The novel begins in 1805 in the crowded and gossip-filled rooms of a St Petersburg party and follows the fortunes of the aristocratic Bolkonsky and Rostov families as Napoleon's armies sweep through Europe, culminating in the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and Napoleon's defeat. Tolstoy's vast novel takes in both the epic sweep of national events and the private experience of individuals, from the keen young soldier to Napoleon himself, and at the heart of it all the complicated triangle of affection that binds his central characters.

What I thought:

So War and Peace is no more. All 1358 pages are now read and I am beginning to realise that I have some element of freedom back (that is a terribly amusing War and Peace based joke, but clearly if you haven’t read it, it will pass right over your head. Or it could mean that it’s not funny. Or that it’s a bit obscure even if you have read it. Take your pick).

Did I enjoy it? Sort of. I certainly found it very engaging at times and I wouldn’t have read it at the pace (five and a half weeks) I did if I didn’t get something out of it. I particularly liked Volume 3, which was when the narrator stepped into the story more and gave his views on people’s rile in history and how leaders think that they are somehow in control and yet any event in life (however great or small that life is) in that moment it is the culmination of a whole load of unconnected events that have gone before and people are not able to operate outside of that and take the credit for things that are really ultimately beyond their own control. I thought it was a really interesting idea and one that permeated the whole book.

As a story it would be right to describe it as epic and it brought together all the different parts of human experience and I was surprised at how funny some bits of the book were, but equally some were very tragic. I have to say that at times it was difficult to keep track of the story, but I think I just about managed to keep up.

Would I recommend it to others? Hmm… It was a good read and I liked it far more than I expected. But if someone wants to read it, they have to want to read it for themselves. I don’t think it is a book to take on lightly because it could easily turn into a test of endurance. I think reading it at a good pace is the best way to do it or else it would be quite easy to put it down and never pick it back up again. It is a definitely a more rewarding read if you read a reasonable chunk at a time (and it also helps to remember what happens as well). So, give it a go if you want to, but you do need to want to.