War & Peace 1: January Reading

Welcome to this first episode of The Reader & the Writer’s year long read: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. In this introductory episode, Shari and Rhea do a brief background of Tolstoy as it relates to his writing of W&P, talk narrative strategy with Tolstoy’s omniscient narrator—who likes to pop out from behind the curtain sometimes in the chapters from Part Two—as well as the theatrical style of the scenes and narration. They discuss the characters—oh the characters! And the families!! They talk about who they love and who they don’t, who they think will rise to prominence in the story and who seems to have faded into the background already. They discuss the significance of the novel opening in French and all the French filtered throughout the story—who speaks it, when it gets spoken the most, and why. They spend time with character motives, and do an overview of the major events of the story so far—which ones they think are especially important for moving the narrative forward, as well as helping us understand what this story is about… which…what isn’t it about?! They also spend some time sharing ways they see War and Peace in conversation with other novels they’ve read on R&W.The podcast plan for the R&W War and Peace episodes is to drop an episode on the 1st Friday of every month. That episode’s contents will be on the reading for the prior month’s reading.Please chat with Shari and Rhea on Substack! Send them your thoughts and/or questions in the comments section below, or through the chat function, to either The Reader & the Writer Substack or to Rhea Forney. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of the Reader & the Writer community!Thanks for listening to this episode of The Reader & the Writer! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and podcast episodes straight to your inbox. Get full access to The Reader & the Writer at thereaderandthewriter.substack.com/subscribe