Tolstoy

Starred review from July 25, 2011
Coming after the centennial of Tolstoy's (1828â1910) death, this biography is worth the extra year's wait. The cliché "larger than lifeâ only begins to describe Tolstoy's complexity: something of a saint, though excommunicated by the Orthodox Church; animal-rights advocate who early on hunted for sport; champion of married chastity, though he fathered a string of children; master of an estate while dressing like a peasant. Bartlett (Chekhov: Secrets from a Life) has no problem compacting all this while also scrupulously examining Tolstoy's understandably rocky relationships with family members. His revolutionary ideas on class and culture caused a serious rift with his wife, Sonya, before a series of partial and tragic reconciliations. Given the volume of Tolstoy's literary production, Bartlett wisely avoids evaluating the work beyond what is necessary to telling the life and situating it in its time. Her deep and easy familiarity with her subject and the period permits Bartlett to touch on both the thinkers and writers who engaged Tolstoyâsuch as Rousseau, Dickens, and Schopenhauerâwhile getting to the essence of the spiritual power that informs his work. Bartlett is particularly adept at assessing Tolstoy's impact, from the role his work played in bringing about the fall of the Romanovs, an image the Soviets highlighted, to how Tolstoy remains subversive in Russia today. 16 pages of photos, map.