Wednesday, August 4, 2010
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
Life is shallow and then you die. And the people who knew you only care about how your death affects their welfare. That pretty much sums up this classic satire about an upwardly-mobile judge. Yikes. This was the first book that Yann Martel recommended to Stephen Harper. Maybe lawyers and politicians are more likely to find resonance in it.
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4 comments:
I love this review. I seem to remember reading this book years and years ago, but I don't remember anything about it!
When I have a strong reaction to a book - even a negative one, as with Ivan Illych - I tend to remember a lot of details even years later. But my memory has become capricious, so it remains to be seen if I'll remember Ivan and his kind manservant and his unpleasant family a year from now.
The advantage of not remembering books is that I can reread them years later and enjoy them almost as if I'd never read them before... On the other hand, I don't think I'll be rereading this one!
I like your way of seeing advantages to a bad memory!
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