piquant
05-24-2005, 06:07 PM
Neal, I felt exactly the way you do about W&P. I too thoroughly enjoyed Anna Karenina, and was looking for more of the same in W&P. Russian literature is by far my favorite, and I expected to love War and Peace. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The characters do not come alive for me. With Anna Karenina I felt like she was more real than half the people I know. The characters in W&P just seem to be flat in comparison. I think that maybe because there were fewer characters in Anna Karenina there was more focus on their developement. One redeeming quality about W&P though is the amazing way that the multitude of characters are interwoven. It is in this web-like complexity that I find the true beauty of the work.