Review: The Kreutzer Sonata

The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If there’s one thing my TV brain needs, it’s audiobooks and a long commute to finally get me through “War and Peace,” to even think about approaching the Russians even. I read “Fathers and Sons” when I was younger, but I am not sure if Turgenev counts? So this is my first flirtation. It’s an odd, short book. The reader Jonathan Oliver was a somewhat shrill, whiny Brit in his performance: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.a... I am not sure if that was on purpose or not. Is this book meant to portray a classic, moralizing tale of a cuckold? Or is it a foreshadowing of the psychological novel and a direct line to “Lolita”? If you took Tolstoy’s afterward/apologia, considered him crazy and placed it in the front of this novella, it is as much a precursor as Nabakov’s own “The Enchanter.” I will have to look all this up a bit more, for now: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing ;)

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