Product Description

By 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the world's most famous author, had become an almost religious figure, surrounded on his lavish estate by family and followers alike. Set in the tumultuous last year of the count's life, "The Last Station" centres on the battle for his soul waged by his wife and his leading disciple.Torn between his professed doctrine of poverty and chastity on the one hand and the reality of his enormous wealth, his thirteen children, and a life of hedonism on the other, Tolstoy makes a dramatic flight from his home. Too ill to continue beyond the tiny station of Astapovo, he believes he is dying alone, while outside over one hundred newspapermen are awaiting hourly reports on his condition.Narrated in six different voices, including Tolstoy's own from his diaries and literary works, "The Last Station" is a richly inventive novel that dances bewitchingly between fact and fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #256052 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 372 pages

Review
"One of the best historical novels written in the last twenty years." GORE VIDAL "Jay Parini has written a stylish, beautifully paced and utterly beguiling novel." SUNDAY TIMES "One of those rare works of fiction that manage to demonstrate both scrupulous historical research and true originality of voice and perception." NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "An impressively knowing and sensitive performance, a wistful late twentieth-century tribute to the giant conflicts of a more titanic age" OBSERVER"

About the Author
Jay Parini a novelist and poet -- is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College in Vermont. His six novels include THE LAST STATION, BENJAMIN'S CROSSING and THE APPRENTICE LOVER. His volumes of poetry include THE ART OF SUBTRACTION: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. In addition to biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner, he has written a volume of essays on literature and politics as well as THE ART OF TEACHING. He edited the OXFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LITERATURE and writes regularly for THE GUARDIAN and other publications.

Customer Reviews

Revealing, compelling and tempting
Its 1910 and Leo Tolstoy, Russia's greatest novelist is both a cult figure among his countrymen and an old man. Written with style and compassion, The Last Station is a semi-fictionalised account of the last year of his life and the dysfunctional and damaging relationships between him, his followers and his family. The main narrative centres on the struggle for Tolstoy's affections, soul and legacy between, chiefly, his deranged wife and his self-seeking and scheming acolyte, Chertkov.

The entire novel is told through five voices - a device which takes a little getting used to but is ultimately very rewarding as it provides insight into the minds and motivations of those who surround, nay smother, Tolstoy.

Intense and compelling, The Last Station reads like fiction even though it isn't, but it is also enlightening and troubling. While Parini has drawn this chief characters finely, there is scarcely one with whom the reader feels any sympathy. Tolstoy's daughter Sasha is perhaps the most likeable among the motley crew but even she turns out to the self-serving. Initially, the reader is tempted to feel sorry for Tolstoy himself but it rapidly becomes apparent that he too is as much responsible for the scheming and selfishness that surrounds him in his final months.

This is a remarkable book, a remarkable achievement and well worth reading but it comes with a health warning too to those who have not read Tolstoy previously: you will want to by the time you have finished this.

Not Just For Tolstoy Fans
Parini's The Last Station is a study of the end of Russian author Leo Tolstoy's life. You don't need to be a fan of Tolstoy to enjoy it--you don't even need to have read any of his novels. This book stands on its own merits.

Told in multiple first person narratives, the book explores how the various players see themselves and each other, enabling the reader to make up their own mind about their characters and motives. Personally, I came to like Tolstoy's long-suffering wife Sofya Andreyevna the best, if only because all the other characters are ranged against her. She's depicted by them as insane, hysterical, controlling, and I don't know what else, when all she wants is to secure the royalties from Tolstoy's work to their descendants. This simple--some might say, laudable--ambition finds her ranged against her husband, their daughter Sasha, and various of Tolstoy's adherents and hangers-on. As it becomes obvious to her that she's failed, she rages in various frightening--and impotent--ways, and finds herself excluded from her husband's deathbed. The winners write the history: she drove Tolstoy from his lifetime home; she wouldn't let him die in peace. But Parini makes sure Sofya's voice is also heard.

Russia stands on the brink of momentous change, but this novel, like Tolstoy's own work, is more about the personal than the political. Tolstoy may despise the luxury in which he lives, but he's unable to break away from it. He may wish to make the grand gesture of leaving his work to the nation, but he does it in secret, fearing a confrontation with his wife. What we see is a man who's lionised by everyone around him--except Sofya--but who is too weak to live up to their perception of him. Yet his feet of clay go unobserved. He's already an icon, no longer a man. All that's left to him, therefore, is to die.

Parini writes well, and does a good job of distinguishing the various narrators--Sofya, Tolstoy himself, their daughter Sasha, Tolstoy's new secretary Bulgakov, his doctor Makovitsky, and the scary Chertkov, the leader of Tolstoy's fan club. The most likeable character is Bulgakov, whose love affair troubles him only a little in the light of one of the leading tenets of Tolstoyism: celibacy. He's more worried about the mission Chertkov has given him: to spy on Tolstoy and report back. Like Tolstoy himself, his solution is to obfuscate. He begins a tentative friendship with Sofya, but soon adopts the majority view of her.

Interspersed in the narrative are some of the author's original poems. If it is ironic that I found myself skipping them just like I skipped Tolstoy's reflections on the nature of history in War and Peace, I'm not convinced that the irony was intentional. On the whole, I didn't feel that the poems belonged--they broke up the narrative and disturbed the fictive dream.

That reservation notwithstanding, this is a highly readable novel which gives an insight into the nature of illustriousness--and its price.

The cult of celebrity - twas ever thus!
This novelised account of Tolstoy's last year has been created from his diaries and those of his family, colleagues and followers.
We find out that the aged Tolstoy is the most famous man in Russia and everybody wants a piece of him. His wife wants acknowledgement that being married to such a celebrity is a burden, and assurances that his family will be looked after once he's gone; his manager Chertkov wants him to sign a will leaving his works to the 'people'; his children just want to be loved. Add to this secretaries, doctors and paparazzi, and it's not a wonder that the 82yr old can't get any peace.
Each chapter is written in the voice of one of the main characters, including Leo himself, and you get a real feel for the pressures they're all under living with or being a true superstar. But it doesn't make for an easy read, and as always with Russian novels, getting to grips with all the different names a single person is known by can be confusing, but get past this and it is a remarkable book.