Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
The moment I fell in love with the novel Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story by Rachel Kadish would be halfway through page six. Before that point the novel was well-written commentary on literature critiquing as delivered by (if it can be said without unnecessary repetition) an intelligent and sarcastic narrator (as both so often go together that they become one). But her passionate defense of books, and her description of how an addiction forms for the sound of pages turning much the way growing up by the sea attunes one to the constant waves, was my first glimpse at what lay beneath the snarky surface.One hundred or so pages later, I realized that revealing character depths is one of the novel’s strengths. To borrow the Shrek metaphor, people are like onions and the novel peels them away one layer at a time. Yolanda, introduced as a man-catching appearance-focused woman, carries herself with devastated beauty as an actress and notably provides sage advice to Tracy in her relationship with George after an almost-argument. Jeff, a hardened cynic, is willing to abandon academia entirely for the man he loves and ruin his cultivated reputation for his friendship with Tracy. Elizabeth, a slip of a graduate student, breaks into the library after hours to continue her research. The novel is not without surprises because the well-developed characters are full of them.It is not only their depths but their flaws that render Kadish’s characters lifelike. Before George revealed his “traditional” views on how he believes a woman should want a family and should prioritize her career above that family, the romance between him and Tracy seemed unreal with them bonding at first sight and quickly progressing to in-depth conversations and amazing sex. Seeing a flaw that could draw Tracy’s ire was the first moment I believed that this relationship between them could be real – anyone can be perfectly charming until you get to know them, and it’s when the charm wears off that you find out how much you really like them.Despite much of its plot being a play upon borrowed romantic conventions, I’m not sure I would be so quick to classify this as a romance novel; while I can’t deny there’s romance, I see it more as a novel about relationships, not just the one Tracy has with George but with everyone else around her. Much of the novel functions according to Gardner’s definition of metafiction or a deconstruction, in that it takes language and ideas apart to examine their inner workings. The typical idea of a romantic ending, which much like a comedy ends with a marriage, is sporked by Kadish without mercy, as well as American literature’s use of tragedy and its avoidance of happiness in Tracy’s discovery of the spiked plant she comes to call her happiness. It casts doubts on traditional romantic ideals (If a guy gives a girl who hates flowers roses, is that really romantic? Should a woman be expected to prioritize family over career, and pressured into doing so?). But when it comes to the romance novel’s purpose, to make the reader fall in love not only with a person but with the idea of romance itself, Kadish succeeds in a manner worthy of worship.By Sarah Anderson
The only thing worse than chick lit is pretentious chick lit. This book was so awful - it was actually recommended to me and apparently I will need to be more selective about what suggestions I honor. I agree with the premise, that that dumb line about happy families being all alike is not true and the implication that there is nothing interesting about happiness, while being something I myself have often said, is certainly simplistic - however, to create an entire novel about that is in itself a pretty bland idea, or at least it became bland. First of all, if you're trying to get me to root for a heroine, maybe make her an actual human being rather than this annoying academic who goes on for pages and pages in a rather boring and narcisistic fashion about her musings of various literary works (maybe I don't know that many hard core academics, but I'm sure SOME of them manage a conversation without dropping lines from Dickenson, or rather, Emily) or it documents the ever so clever and snappy (read: trite and contrived) dialogue of her stupid dates with her equally one dimensional, plot device rather than a character boyfriend, like I care, who proceeds to be an absolute freak for the purposes of building drama but then because it all has to turn out all right in the end (this is a book about happiness not being trite, after all - and oh, sorry if I spoiled the ending) he ends up being good again - not likeable, mind you, because none of these characters have actual dimension and are all a bunch of cardboard pieces. This book was bad from the start and did nothing to redeem itself.
What do You think about Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story (2007)?
In "Anna Karenina," Leo Tolstoy opens with the statement, "All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.""Nonsense!" replies Rachel Kadish's protagonist, a 33-year old assistant professor of English."Oh yeah?" says the rest of the novel. "I'll show you! Sort of."There is a lot to like about this book, which aggressively champions happiness and love, albeit through the words of a woman who declares (at 33, mind you) that she's given up on romance. Unsurprisingly, she then meets a man whom she considers to be not her type with whom she proceeds to fall in love. The book adheres to the standard, get-em-together, tear-em-apart, kiss-and-make-up at the end plot, but the relationship between Tracy and George is really quite stunningly well-rendered, witty, and a great deal of fun.And the book as a whole is laugh-aloud funny. Kadish wreaks merry hell with academia and theatre with hilarious results. However, the book skews hip-young-New-Yorker, and those that are not hip, young, New Yorkers are pretty much reduced to the stumbling blocks that annoy and/or hinder Tracy and make George act like a twit. And possibly as a nod to the maligned Tolstoy of the title, not everything goes Tracy's way outside of the romance. Personally, I didn't care for that aspect of the book. If an author is going to stake out happiness as a means of narrative rebellion against capital-L Literature, it feels rather cowardly to deal the heroine such an inexplicable blow. But ultimately, the relationship between Tracy and George was enough to sustain my enthusiasm, with an ending that's not "and they lived happily ever after," though really, there's no reason why they shouldn't.
—Libby
Ow. This academic novel cut too close to the bone, what with the internecine struggles and the insinuation that having a nervous collapse will harm your academic career less than taking too long to defend your dissertation (um, see what I mean?). Her academic colleagues seemed pretty stereotypical, although definitely recognizable archetypes.I've seen it described as smart chick-lit, and I think I resent the notion that any novel dealing with a single woman is inherently "chick-lit" -- paraphrasing the Tolstoy reference of the title, "All happy families are alike and all novels about single women are chick-lit"? I know that's a genre many women enjoy, and I have no problem with that (I quite liked Bridget Jones, back in the day), but it seems like an easy dismissal. So men never worry about getting married and like that? This also supports the protagonist Tracy Farber's contention that it's not considered intellectually respectable to look at happiness in literature -- that it just gets dismissed offhand.I enjoyed this book, but it was a reminder for me to stay far away from novels of academia until I'm viewing them from a safer distance.
—Catherine Siemann
I am giving this book three stars for the writing. The writing is very educated, you can tell the author got a good education on how to write a book but not particularly a talent. Thus to me this story she is trying to sell is masked by good writing, take away the writing and the story is a flop, nothing new, nothing profound. It feels as though the author is trying way to hard to inrtoduce something new and fresh about love and relationships, yet it fails. Honestly, I did not find anything interesting about the main charecters love affair. In fact I was more enthralled with the "heroine's" relationships at work, that could of been a nice story. There was no love in this book, it was just another guy and another girl. Actually, I think that everything around the main character was more interesting then the main character herself.
—Redlilly24
