THE SEARCH: A Biography of Leo Tolstoy

The Search is more mature in tone and fuller in details of the novelist's life than Philipson's The Count Who Wished He Were A Peasant (KR, 1967), although without the attention Philipson paid to his writings. Readers will find no criticism or even summaries of the great novels or other works, but Carroll is particularly thorough on Tolstoy's happy childhood on his family estate, the drifting, gambling, dissatisfaction and self contempt of his youth, the stability that came with authorship and a family, and then the spiritual crisis that resulted in a later life of zeal and good works and hysterical conflict with his less ascetic wife. And though Carroll draws no conclusions from the biographical facts, they are readably presented -- and, in Tolstoy's case, the drama is inherent.