Katy B :)’s Reviews > War and Peace > Status Update

Book 11, Chapter 25 = perfection

I'm back to enjoying the book very much, so much that I don't even dislike Nicholas Rostov so much. I am kind of surprised by the amount of cross-dressing that goes on in the novel. So far there have been 2 characters whose job is just to ... pretend to be the opposite sex? And just hang out with the aristocrats and cross-dress? As Tolstoy himself would say, human nature has never changed.

I'm not enjoying the more recent sections as much as I enjoyed the first two books. Tolstoy was a refreshing breath of realism after the melodrama of Dostoevsky, and I love when novels can take politics and professional work and make them show different aspects of individual character. But once Napoleon actually went and spoke to Andrey in the hospital it's been a bit much. And I can't stand Rostov!