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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent bite-sized Tolstoy, January 4, 2008
I'd never read Tolstoy because I was always intimidated by the size of his major works; thus, a collection of his short stories was an appealing first step.
"Family Happiness" is the primary work in this book. In it, Tolstoy opines on what makes a successful marriage. I was amazed by how prescient to today was his 19th century relationship advice. Because he grasps universal and eternal elements of the human soul, his advice will be just as relevant 100 years from now.
The other stories display Tolstoy's thoughts on work, faith, temptation, high-society, and ambition - among other topics - and are equally as enlightening.
Tolstoy clearly did not sacrifice brevity for depth as these five short stories were all outstanding reads. A great introduction to one of history's deepest writers. Highly recommend.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good story, but with a bad ending, April 2, 2010
This review is from: Family Happiness: Stories (Harper Perennial Classic Stories) (Paperback)
Critics, such as John Bayley, tell us that Tolstoy disliked Family Happiness as soon as he completed it: "the main (reason) seems to have been because the story was made up." Tolstoy lacked experience with the events he was narrating. Tolstoy seems to be right. The story is well-written, but it does not fully explain the reaction of the husband in the tale.
The first half of the story details the developing love of a seventeen year old girl, who grew up secluded in the country, to a 36 year old business man, a friend of her father, a man more than twice her age, who had traveled much. The second half tells about her life after her marriage; both she and her husband are very much in love.
However, she discovers that she is bored with life and persuades her husband to live some months in the large city. She attends many social events there and experiences a life she only heard about, a life that her older husband had long ago experienced and no longer needed or desired. Her new life creates a rift between the couple. The husband clearly loves his wife and gives her all she desires, but the love changes. It dissolves into a love that many middle age couples experience.
She realizes her mistake and tries to reignite the former deeper happier love, but her husband, who insists that he loves her, tells her that there is no possibility to return to the first love. It is this decision by the husband or his insight that is not sufficiently explored.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy, May 11, 2009
Family Happiness was first published in 1859, and it marks one of the first of Tolstoy's fictional explorations of the theme of family happiness. It is autobiographical to a large extent and was written after his engagement to his ward was broken off. It explores what might have happened had the marriage taken place.
Tolstoy searched for family happiness his entire life. He did not know it in its complete form as a child as his mother died when he was about 18 months old and his father when he was nine. After his father's death, little Leo and his three brothers and sister were shifted around among other relatives. First his paternal grandmother had guardianship of the children, but she too died 11 months after his father's death. Guardianship then passed to a paternal aunt, who also died. There was then a custody battle between another paternal aunt and a paternal cousin (the model for Sonya in War and Peace) with the paternal aunt winning.
None of the five children ever found family happiness in their adult lives.
Tolstoy was obsessed with trying to understand what family happiness consists of and how to achieve it. This obsession is evident in the fictional marriages he portrayed in War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Kreutzer Sonata, and The Devil. Some believe that Tolstoy did achieve family happiness in the early years of his marriage, but I would argue that the relationship between husband and wife was volatile from the beginning, disintegrating over the years until his celebrated flight from home ending in his death from pneumonia in 1910.
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