I'm working on my long novel (just passed the halway point!) but in the meantime needed to feel like I was making progress so took a break and snuck in my novella. The Death of Ivan Ilyach had been rated highly by several people whose opinion I trust but I'm still fairly sensitive to books about death and cancer after my mother's death. I'm not sure I'll ever get over that. Still, I figure I could handle this because it was short. It's short - and good. I enjoyed Tolstoy's perspective on life and death and the idea of looking back on your life and your decisions and what matters and wondering if you made the right choices or not.
I also just finished Remains of the Day and the two books have quite a bit of overlap when it comes to theme which, while purely coincidental because I did't know that about either when I picked them up, has been quite interesting for me to ponder.
I normally would say that I know a book has been good when I get to the end and am sad that it's over. In this case, I trust Tolstoy. I'm not sure I could have handled this book had it been longer but I did enjoy it the way he wrote it and I'd recommend it. Plus, you can spend just an hour or so reading and then get to claim your read some Tolstoy!
The Death of Ivan Ilyach was my Novella choice for the back to the classics challenge. 2 down, 10 to go!
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