Tolstoy has got to be the only author I have read that constantly lets you know that you are at his mercy when you take up one of his books. If he wants to kill somebody off then he will and you are left helpless watching events unfold knowing that shouting at the book is not going to help. Normally in a book a character will almost die or if they do I am not the bothered by it. I had the same feeling of helplessness when reading war and peace.

I loved everything about this book, from discussions on Politics and Princesses gossiping, to Levin mowing a meadow. Levin took about 30 pages to do the whole meadow but I was there the whole time, jealous that it wasn't me.

As for the characters you have Anna and Vronsky who I did not like, not sure if that is how you are supposed to feel, when you first meet them I had an instant dislike to the both of them. Next you have Kitty and Levin, wonderful characters who have a wonderful part to play in the story. For quite a lot of this book I wondered why they were there, they needed their own book, but by the end I could see it was a kind of balance, as one couple are falling from grace, another are on the up and up.

At the end of part 7 there is an event that was so unexpected and sudden I was left feeling completely empty, I had to put the book down for a while just to come to terms with what happened.

The version of the book I read was a translation by Rosamund Bartlett, I thought she did a fantastic job, lots of footnotes and endnotes giving you a bit of background on what was being discussed in the story. One awesome thing Rosamund has done in this book is give you a little section at the beginning giving the various names and nicknames of each character, I do find it a bit confusing coping with Russians having different names depending on what social situation they are currently in, so found this very helpful.

I think I will have to read more Tolstoy, does anybody have any recommendations?