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The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year

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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.

[Reviewed by Debbie Moorhouse]

We are given a picture of Tolstoy's last year through a variety of voices: that of his wife, Sofya Andreyevna; of his daughter Sasha; of Valentin Fedorovich Bulgakov, his young secretary who had just been appointed; of Vladimir Grigorevich Chertkov, whom Tolstoy loved as his closest friend and disciple; and of Dushan Petrovich Makovitsky, Tolstoy's doctor. (They had in fact all kept diaries.) In between, we have passages from Tolstoy's letters, diary entries, and other writings, as well as some poems by `J.P.' who, I learn from other reviewers, is Parini himself.

In the first half of the book there is in some of these accounts, ostensibly of Tolstoy's last year, a good deal of flash-back to earlier times; and I found that device somewhat artificial, when, for example, Parini has the doctor say, `I am small ... Though I am hardly an old man, not having yet passed fifty, I am quite bald'. On those occasions I thought that I would rather be reading a straightforward narrative account of that last year, which could equally well have brought out how Tolstoy was regarded by his adoring entourage and the dislike which everyone in the story felt for almost everyone else. In particular they all (daughter Sasha included) ganged up on Tolstoy's unhappy and neurotic wife, who may not have shared Tolstoy's lofty ideas, but who had so much more affection for him than he seemed to have for her.

In the second half of the book, this irritant falls away as the haunting story develops. There is old Tolstoy himself: deeply emotional; adored by his disciples and by the crowds who turned out to greet him at railway stations; guilt-ridden about his wealth and about whether his actions were really inspired by idealism or by a kind of selfishness; tormented by his exasperation with his wife; pulled hither and thither between giving in to her or to his devotion to Chertkov. She, in turn, was maddened by the hold that the detested Chertkov had over her husband. Tolstoy had even handed over his diaries for safe-keeping to him. Sofia bullied her weary husband to have them returned to her, and then used them against him to devastating effect. She was also tormented by the idea that Chertkov would persuade Tolstoy to leave all his writings to the nation instead of providing an income for her and her children by assigning the copyright to them - and this indeed Chertkov accomplished. (Sofia will have to live on a pension from the Tsar.)

In the end Tolstoy fled from his home, hoping perhaps to die as a solitary hermit, though he took his doctor with him, and Sasha knew his whereabouts. He died nine days later in the house of the station master at Astapovo. His family had found him, though Sofia was only admitted to see him when he was no longer conscious. The press camped outside the house, as did people who came from far and wide.

As Parini says himself, his novel sails as close as possible to the shore line of the literal events that made up the last year of Tolstoy's life, and this is confirmed by reading, for example, the relevant pages of Henri Troyat's biography of Tolstoy. I do not feel that Parini has added as much imagination or artistry to his story as Leonid Tsypkin did when, in his `Summer at Baden-Baden', he described a year in the life of Dostoevsky (see my Amazon review). But comparisons are odious; the story is well re-told; the characters are well described; and the pathos of both Tolstoy's and Sofia's life in that year is well captured.

I read "The Last Station' in anticipation of the film (recently released) based on the novel, which details the eventful last year of Leo Tolstoy's life and, in particular, the final unraveling of his marriage to Sofia Tolstoy. The author, Jay Parini, describes his own work quite accurately; "The Last Station" is, he says, "fiction, though it bears some of the trappings and affects of literary scholarship." That scholarship is extensive. Each chapter belongs to the voice of a different character, all of whom kept diaries or notes on their relationship with the great man, including Sofia; Tolstoy's daughter Sasha; his disciple, Vladimir Cherthov; his physician, Dushan Makovitsky, and a young secretary, Valentin Bulgakov The dominant voice, of course, is that of Tolstoy himself, and Parini stays very close to things he actually wrote or said.

It is helpful for a reader of this novel to have an interest in Tolstoy and an acquaintance with some of his work. I don't think "The Last Station" stands on its own as historical fiction, and I don't think it is meant to. If, however, you admire Tolstoy's writings, "The Last Station" offers an interesting perspective on a man who attracted adoring crowds, who drew to him disciples who hung on his every word, and who drove his wife, who despised the cultish atmosphere that surrounded her husband, to despair. His death in 1910 at the railway station in Astapovo was a true celebrity spectacle, utterly cinematic.

Much of the novel is about the tension between Tolstoy's status as an aristocratic landowner and his sympathies, which lay with the peasants. The world of 1917 is not far away, and the Tsar's policemen prowl uneasily on the edges of the scenes where Tolstoy appears before his adoring public. It is also a novel about love. Tolstoy and his wife had 13 children and a marriage whose deeply personal details survive in the diaries of both husband and wife. Their disagreements on his views about how he wished to live his life, eschewing luxury and espousing celibacy, led to unbearable tension and, ultimately, estrangement between them. Yet the novel has several love affairs (despite the great man's philosophy): between the young secretary Bulgakov and Masha, another Tolstoy acolyte; between Tolstoy's daughter Sasha and her friend Varvara. Here the tension, Parini seems to suggest, is between the love that exists between individuals and a more abstract love for humankind. It is a divide that Tolstoy cannot reconcile, only flee---hence the spectacle of the death at Astapovo. "The Last Station" will make you want to pick up "Anna Karenina" again, or, if you come to this novel from the film based on it, perhaps it will make you want to pick up Tolstoy's great novels for the first time.
N.B. Jay Parini reviews an edition of Sofia Tolstoy's diaries (translated by Cathy Porter) in The Guardian, Dec. 5, 2009.
M. Feldman

The Last Station is a fascinating read. The reality of its subject matter is present on every page, and the similarity between the dialogue created to fit the historical events flows seamlessly with the extracts included from Tolstoy's own letters and literary works. It's a slow starter. You're not quite sure what the author is trying to convey or how he plans to do so. Being a novel of the last year of Tolstoy's life and given the inescapably moralistic, almost annoyingly self-righteous Tolstoyans who populate the pages, it seems set that a moral of some sort is in the offing. About half way through you get the idea that this story is being told entirely because Tolstoy's last year of life was fascinatingly eventful!
The chief draw-card of this episodically structured, poorly constructed, novel is in its characters, a remarkably reprehensible mob. From lowly secretary Bulgakov through to the great man Tolstoy himself, everyone has a list of absurdities and eccentricities so extraordinary that it's hard not to be caught up in them. Tolstoyan thought as described in this book seems like a very bizarre almost fetish like code of existence and originally I found myself very sympathetic towards the seemingly less self-motivated, self-righteous characters of the book. However, every character in this story has an axe to grind.
You will fall in love, in league or in sympathy with every character in this novel by turn only to have them all eventually betray you by revealing themselves to be every bit as dissembling and self-motivated as the people they in turn are criticising.
It's a very emotive book, and an exhausting experiment for even the most dedicated reader. Many of the passages are so heavy with their own prose that you will feel like giving up. However, like any good melodrama, the motivation to continue lies in the will to see just who is on top (alive and/or sane) at the end. The books penultimate betrayal is that you are never actually told. That said, you will meet some fascinating (if peculiar) people along the way, each of them described richly and honestly - clearly handled with love and care. A beautiful exercise in literary biography.

I bought this book after seeing a trailer for the new movie starring Christopher Plummer as Leo Tolstoy in the final year of his life and Helen Mirren as his embattled wife. It was immediately clear that these were fine roles for two great actors; was the movie based on an equally great book?

In some ways, it did not need to be, for the greatness was already there in Tolstoy's writings and example. In the second part of his life, following the inclinations of his own Levin in ANNA KARENINA, he took up a simpler life in the country, working alongside the peasants and at least attempting to renounce his wealth. In 1910, when Parini introduces him to us, he is living at his estate of Yasnaya Polyana surrounded by a virtual commune of Tolstoyans (one of several such communities in Russia and abroad) almost worshipping the master and trying to live by his tenets of chastity, poverty, and peace. For Tolstoy himself, this involved many contradictions; the still-married father of numerous children was an unlikely prophet of celibacy, and Russia's most celebrated author might live simply but was certainly not poor. There were also great tensions with his wife, Sofya Andreyvna (Sonya), who was unwilling to renounce the comforts she felt she was due as Countess Tolstoy and mourned the distancing of the affections of her once-beloved husband.

Much as Michael Shaara had done in his Gettysburg novel THE KILLER ANGELS, Parini tells the story of Tolstoy's final year through a series of different voices: his wife Sonya, his daughter Sasha, Makovitsky his doctor, Chertkov his closest disciple and agent, and his new secretary Bulgakov; there are also letters and diary entries by Tolstoy himself and three poems by the author. Most of this is based on actual documentary material, but Parini is most effective, I think, when he most uses his own imagination as a novelist. Sonya's reminiscences of their courtship, for example, have a grace that offsets the mentally ill woman she eventually became. Sasha's service as her father amanuensis and ally is humanized by the warmth of a growing love for another woman. And Bulgakov's arrival at the estate is delicious, as an avowed celibate who immediately falls under the spell of one of the master's more attractive acolytes, a worldly-wise young woman called Masha.

The main downsides are that it can be hard to get one's bearings at first, some of the switches between novel and documentary are a bit abrupt, and the book tends to be rather episodic; I have noticed this problem in other biographical novels such as THE MASTER, Colm Toibin's book about Henry James. Towards the end, though, when the 82-year-old Tolstoy finally abandons his wife and home to set out as a wanderer, only to fall ill at a tiny railroad station, the historical events carry everything on their tide. The book offers a facinating insight into the character of this literary lion turned lamb, and I am sure that a good screenplay will smooth out the few rough edges. [LATER: Having just seen the movie, I certainly think that its evocative setting and the warmth of the central performances gives it a rich coherence that the book does not quite have, with its many discursions and changing points of view. The only part of Parini's story that I really miss is the lesbian relationship involving Sasha, but I can see why this had no place in the screenplay.]

"The Last Station" is the new movie on the last year of Tolstoy's (1828-1910) life. It stars Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren and a distinguished cast. However, you are cheating yourself if you fail to read the Jay Parini 1990 novel upon which the film is based. Parini is a teacher, poet and novelist who has written literary biographies of such lions as William Faulkner, Robert Frost and John Steinbeck.
The Last Station refers to the tiny Asypovo railroad station where the famous author of Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Cossacs and other great works of fiction died in 1910. He fled from home wanting to get away from his mentally ill and dominating wife. The book is a series of observations on life with the Tolstoy family recorded in diary form. These voices include:
Sofya Andreyevna-She is the daughter of a Moscow doctor who married Tolstoy in 1862. The couple had 13 children and she helped her famous husband with his work. In this novel she is 66 and mentally disturbed. She hates the fans of Tolstoy and his religious followers who spend their time around the great man. She wants the Tolstoy literary work royalties to go to her and her family. She is disdainful of the radical non-violent sect of which Tolstoy has become the leader. He wants to give away everything to the poor and live as a peasant while she most certainly does not. She is a complex woman who has lived with an enigmatic satyr of a genius for almost fifty years of marriage. Tolstoy is sixteen years her senior. His sexual and behavioral treatment of her was often horrendous but she persevered to the end.
Bulgakov is a young man who is hired by Tolstoy to help the author compile a book of quotations. He falls in love with Masha a follower of the author. Their love story is beautifully told.
Dr. Makovitsky is a medical man whose role at the Tolstoy home is to take care of the fractious and hard to contro Count Leo.
Sasha is the sickly, lesbian daughter of Tolstoy who uses her Remington typewriter to record the words of her father. She is a sweet and sensitive girl who is jealous of her father's love for his other children.
Jay Parini, the author, inserts several of his original poems into the novel's text.
Parini's book is a beautiful historical novel on a famous man. The Russia pictured reminds one of a Chekhov play just before World War I and the Soviet takeover ruined the rural society of old Russia.
The book is a good and relatively short read at 287 pages. All lovers of Tolstoy or literature will enjoy this well researced and written modern novel.

Leo Tolstoy, the author of `War and Peace' and `Anna Karenina', died in November 1910 at Astapovo in the west of Russia. He died (aged 82) at a railway station, in the tiny dwelling of the stationmaster.

In this rich novel, Jay Parini explores Tolstoy's last year of life. With skilful interweaving of fact and fiction, Mr Parini paints an image of Tolstoy which shows his struggles between convictions and conventions. The novel itself incorporates points of view by Tolstoy himself, members of his family and his followers and brings to life a man that many of us only know through his contribution to literature. Tolstoy lived a fascinating life, and this novel touches only on part of it.

The novel is a wonderful work of fiction. It could also be an image of Tolstoy himself, helpful to those reading his works and seeking to understand a little of the environment in which he lived and worked.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

The Last Station is yet another retelling of Tolstoy's life based on false information. While the author does tell us at the end of the book that he based this historical fiction on diary's of the characters, what he does not do is present a balanced story. He presents the last years of Tolstoy's life as being controlled and manipulated by a paranoid and hysterical wife (which, by the way is exactly what Chertov wanted everyone to believe). The author does not give Tolstoy's wife, Sofia Andreeva the credit due her for all her life's work with Tolstoy. If it had not been for Sofia A, we would know much less about Tolstoy and even fewer details of his transition from a genius writer to a hypocritical pundit. I am disappointed that the author did very little to balance this incredible love story and life of two brilliant people and instead took the easy way of vilifying a woman to make his story more dramatic. This should not be called historical fiction but rather creative writing on people who lived 100 years ago.

As one who is fascinated with historical fiction, and yet usually disappointed in it, I found this a surprisingly sensitive and intelligent interpretation of the last year of Tolstoy's life. I believe it is also about as historically accurate as it is possible for a novel to be. We follow the aged genius, unable to take the expected pride in his literary accomplishments or bask in their rewards. Instead, he is afflicted with regrets for his over-privileged life and obsessed with the need for atonement through grand gestures of pacifism, self-abnegation, and Christian service...

Unable to participate in such lofty idealism stands his wife of fifty years, the Countess Sofya, and the novel examines unsparingly their still-loving but deeply conflicted relationship. A creature of intelligence and passion, the countess is steeped in aristocratic values and determined to maintain a life of enlightened privilege for herself and her family. She is deeply fearful of losing all she holds dear (including some of her children) to her husband's enthusiasms. Her fears, which have rendered her increasingly unstable, are not without foundation; neither is her self-image of one who has sacrificed her own life to her wifely duties. Like so many women, she was willing to do that as long as she felt cherished and appreciated, but not in her perceived state of physical and emotional abandonment.

Theirs was a tragic estrangement, through which vestiges of their former passion sometimes reappear, and it is Parini's great
achievement that he can divide our sympathies equally and include both in his understanding, affection, and respect.

The novel's other characters are also skillfully etched, including the quite chilling acolyte Vladimir Chertkov, the young disciple Bulgakov (any relation to the author of "The Master and Margarita"?), and several of the Tolstoy offspring. And
excerpts from actual letters and diaries add a special interest to an unusually humane and beautiful work.

I was browsing among the books at Costco, where I had gone to buy groceries. I came across this novel about Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist. I showed it to my husband, and he said he would buy this book because he knows something about Jay Parini, the author. Before I started reading the book, I found out that a movie had been made, based on it. I began the book hoping it would have an interesting story, a serious plot, a villain, and two or three good characters. I read the first forty pages, but did not find anything to inspire a person to make a movie based on this book. I started pestering my husband, saying, "What is in this book to make a movie of? There is nothing in it to excite anybody." He just said, "Keep reading." I took his advice and continued reading, and suddenly the novel was bursting with drama after drama. There was an explosion of anger, crying, uncontrollable jealousy, suspicion, cheating, and manipulation. The screaming, cursing, abusing, and shouting echoed in my ear. Tolstoy'swife, Sophya, suspected Tolstoy's attachment to his male secretary,Cherktov, and she felt her husband did not love her anymore. Once I reached that part of the novel, I was hooked. I clung to the book and carried it wherever I went. Although this book is fiction, it is mostly based on facts. It is obvious that the author has done an intensive research on Tolstoy's life. The book is a real thriller. The author has highlighted the unintentional consequences of extreme jealousy and suspicion. We all have the positive and negative emotions but how to handle them is the art of life itself. Although Tolstoy led an unhappy life in his old age, he had a great success and became a world famous writer. Tolstoy moved heaven and earth to uplift the peasants' life and made us aware of their plight. In that respect, Tolstoy was undoubtedly a great man.

To understand why Sophya was seething with jealousy, I read another book about Tolstoy, and I can say that she had many good reasons to be jealous.

This is a powerful novel, and it is realistic. We all must have experienced
these types of emotions, and the author has explicitly described the
behavior of a jealous woman. Her suspicion and jealousy made her lose her mind, and made not only her life miserable but also the people who lived around her.

It was difficult to live with a man who was full of contradictions. Leo
Tolstoy was an aristocrat and lived in style but then suddenly decided to live like a hermit and expected his family to do the same. Naturally, Sophya could not go through the abrupt change. On the one hand, he was very kind and on the other, he would become rude. He gambled when he was young, was free with women but later became a pious man. It was difficult to adjust to a person when that person changes constantly his mode of life, his views, and his living style. My sympathies are with Sophya who believed in the welfare of her children and fought for their rights.

I would like people to read other biographies of this great person as well as this book with all its fiction and melodrama.