February 2008: Books We Love About Love

February's Books We Love takes on a topic that has been perhaps the richest source of literature since people first began putting pen to paper (or rock to cave wall): Love. The bounty for this Valentine's Day includes a classic love story from 19th-century Russia and another from 18th-century Colonial America, as well as a beautifully rendered memoir, two novels that explore the complexities of 21st-century relationships, and an anthology of short fiction that challenges our conventional notions of romance.

1 of 8

War and Peace (Knopf)

By Leo Tolstoy, newly translated from Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Count Leo Tolstoy swept his magic wand of a pen over Moscow to recreate a tableau vivant of early-19th-century Russia, when Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armee -- having swept its way successfully all across Europe -- invaded the Russian hinterland in an ultimately unsuccessful quest for unparalleled military might. War and Peace -- essentially concerned with that 1812 invasion and the domestic lives of two Russian families in the decade and a half leading up to it -- is a love affair on two principal levels: the lives and loves of the aristocratic Rostovs and the Bolkonskys on one hand, and Tolstoy's love of the Russian language on the other. And this is an epic story that can be read and appreciated for either one or for both simultaneously: The ups and downs and ins and outs of the Russians in love and death and war and peace flow along as time's universal river in Tolstoy's magisterial command, just as his love of Russian (and French) and the Russian character lets him compose a picture infused with brushstrokes alternately long and short that repeat one another, interrupt one another, stumble along elbowing one another in a willy-nilly attempt to outleap one another...and sometimes stop, as an icicle stops, dripping in the cold, lengthening drop by drop.

This new translation would make a wonderful Valentine's gift: The husband-and-wife team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky clearly love language as much as they love a good story. Reading War and Peace is a love affair to remember.
-- Tom Claire

Get the book

See what other readers have to say about this story. Leave a Comment.

1 of 8