SONYA: The Life of Countess Tolstoy

by Anne Edwards ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1980

Lawrence and Frieda, Fitzgerald and Zelda--they were mere hills of marital discord compared to the Everest of them all: Tolstoy and Sonya. Since the slope most biographers have climbed is Leo's (apart from Cynthia Asquith, in 1961), Edwards--the biographer of Judy Garland and Vivien Leigh--now attempts the female side. Her technique is pure MGM: ""'How serene and simple you are,' he said. They spoke for some minutes, but Sonya was never quite sure what had been said. It was as if they had both appeared suddenly in the same dream."" But the basic facts are here, even though lumpily padded (more time is spent on describing Tsar Nicholas' coronation than on the composition of War and Peace and Anna Karenina--as if these books somehow just got done). The lively and intelligent daughter of a court doctor, Sonya married Leo only to discover his surprising sexual fuddy-duddiness (for procreation only--hence the endless round of childbirth and painful nursing). It isn't surprising, therefore, that Sonya came to be happy only when Leo busily wrote his masterpieces (when he was immune from even his own crackpot ideas), feeling useful then as his fair-copyist. But the less he wrote, the more the trouble. From her diary: ""He turned to Christianity. The martyrdom was mine, not his."" After-effects became their bone of contention: Sonya's demand for title to the rights for his pre-""Tolstoyan"" works; her hatred of Chertkov and other acolytes; the rages and fights and hurtful messages sent through their diaries--each read by the other. Even after Leo's grotesque noli-me-tangere death at the Astapovo rail station, the question remained: Which of them had driven the other mad? Edwards is sure it was Leo's fault, but--by shortchanging us on a portrait of his individual genius, and by muting both his intensity and hers; by replacing this with technicolor sumptuousness and period-feel; by using female victimization, à la Garland as her thesis--she leaves us not knowing what these people were really like. A paucity of understanding--human, literary, historical--gives an impression of a book that is, though readable enough, seriously out of its depth.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION