This book is more commonly published under the title "Family Happiness" - which IMHO is a real mistitle. I've explained why in the spoiler below.

I read this to find out how Tolstoi wrote, as after about 100 pages into War And Peace I had hardly dented his opus magnus .

I unexpectedly also found out about Lev Tolstoi in the process - he was brave to write a book autobiographically, that always impresses me. It's just such a pity honesty extends to documenting the .... no, that's spoiler material below

So I could read about the character development of the fictional characters as well as the author in the same book, this makes it well worth reading.


I saw this book more about the happiness of Life, Romance and Marriage - as soon as Family was the focus it was more about Family Responsibility, with not a whole lot of Happiness.

My book cover was exactly as the picture this review is written to - I find that a fr more optimistic outlook.

acknowledging review by jwhenderson here
https://www.librarything.com/work/1450206/reviews/117727420

This is a story that begins as a fairy tale romance and ends in maternal happiness or sadness depending on your point of view.

Narrated by Masha, a teenage girl, the story tells of a courtship that has the trappings of a mere family friendship. Masha's falls in love with an older family friend, Sergey Mikhaylych whos is in his mid-thirties. Eros grips Masha and her love develops until she must reveal it to Sergey Mikhaylych and discovers that he also is deeply in love. If he has resisted her it was because of his fear that the age difference between them would lead the very young Masha to tire of him. He likes to be still and quiet, he tells her, while she will want to explore and discover more and more about life. Is Masha naive? Perhaps, but she may merely be willful. Her view of their "love" is idealized and she is unsure about her own consciousness of the world she has entered at such a young age. Nonetheless the couple are apparently passionately happy, so they engage to be married and move to Mikhaylych's home.
Masha soon feels impatient with the quiet order of life on the estate, notwithstanding the powerful understanding and love that remains between the two. She thinks to herself, "I began to feel lonely, that life was repeating itself, that there was nothing new either in him or myself, and that we were merely going back to what had been before."
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MB-6

bookshelves: gutenberg-project, e-book, slavic, autumn-2013, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, translation, published-1859
Recommended to ☯Bettie☯ by: Laura
Read from November 24 to December 04, 2013

That Gutenberg link

Opening: We were in mourning for our mother, who had died the preceding autumn, and we had spent all the winter alone in the country--Macha, Sonia and I.

Sergius Mikaïlovitch arrives: '"Here, play me this," said he, opening my Beethoven at the adagio of the sonata, Quasi una fantasia. "Let us see how you play," he continued, taking his cup of tea to drink in a corner of the room.'

Page 24: Katia's musings when at her devotions bring to mind Tolstoy's thoughts: 'No thought entered my mind of journeys to foreign lands, guests at home, excitement, stir, and gayety; it was to be a peaceful existence, a home life in the country, perpetual abnegation of one's own will, perpetual love for each other, perpetual and absolute thankfulness to a loving and helpful Providence.



One of Tolstoi's most obscure and psychological works, "Katia" tales the tale of a young woman, beautiful and vibrant and her much older husband, slowly discover that their ideals, their concepts of happiness are very separate indeed. ( )