Review: The Tolstoy Estate

Title: The Tolstoy Estate

Author: Steven Conte

Publisher: 2nd September 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers Australia

Pages: 304 pages

How I Read It: ARC book

Genre: historical fiction, WWII

My Rating: 3.5 cups

Synopsis:

From the winner of the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Award, Steven Conte, comes a powerful, densely rich and deeply affecting novel of love, war and literature

In the first year of the doomed German invasion of Russia in WWII, a German military doctor, Paul Bauer, is assigned to establish a field hospital at Yasnaya Polyana - the former grand estate of Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of the classic War and Peace. There he encounters a hostile aristocratic Russian woman, Katerina Trubetzkaya, a writer who has been left in charge of the estate. But even as a tentative friendship develops between them, Bauer's hostile and arrogant commanding officer, Julius Metz, becomes erratic and unhinged as the war turns against the Germans. Over the course of six weeks, in the terrible winter of 1941, everything starts to unravel...

From the critically acclaimed and award-winning author, Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate is ambitious, accomplished and astonishingly good: an engrossing, intense and compelling exploration of the horror and brutality of conflict, and the moral, emotional, physical and intellectual limits that people reach in war time. It is also a poignant, bittersweet love story - and, most movingly, a novel that explores the notion that literature can still be a potent force for good in our world.

My Thoughts

I was instantly attracted to this book for its stunning cover, it being historical fiction and the incorporation of renown literature ie. Tolstoy. This is a very ambitious undertaking and the author does an admirable job in delivering the many finer details of a side of war not often portrayed. Seen through the eyes of a moral forty year old German doctor involved in a very immoral situation, this book is compelling in its exploration of the brutality of war in the harsh Russian winter. 

 “Are you a good man, Paul Bauer?” she said to him as soon as he sat down again. “Is that why you’re here?” He glanced at her sideways to see if she was mocking him. “Because I must say I like you better as a saviour of innocent civilians than as a servant of the German war machine.”  “The men I operate on are people too, you know.” “Just not innocent.”

Conte covers a six week period when the German army occupies the former residence of author Leo Tolsoy. There are many layers to this book. Firstly there is the confronting descriptions of being part of a field hospital and the detailed accounts of the injuries and many deaths. There is also a strong sense of time and place - Russia in winter - the arctic cold is very much a character in itself for this story. Then there is what the author terms his ‘dark version of M.A.S.H’ with the relationships and banter amongst the German officers. There is the romance (not overt) through a love of literature and the incorporation of themes from Tolstoys, ‘War and Peace’ between the good doctor and the Russian woman left in charge of the estate. Overall, this is a detailed and precise focus on one point in time and the lasting impact war can ravage on both person and place. 

‘Six weeks we’ve been here - the same amount of time as Napoleon held Moscow.” “I suppose I should be grateful you haven’t followed his example and burnt the place down.” “Yet,” he warned.’

Interspersed throughout the war narrative, are letters written much later by the survivors, which assists the reader in understanding how this impacted on their lives after this six week period. This book is brutally honest and confronting. It is full of horrors yet moments of love (human) and reverence (literature) for what people cling to as an anchor to see them through such times. Somehow Conte weaves it all together for a complete exploration of German and Soviets during WWII and the physical, social, emotional and intellectual strains during a dark period in history. 

‘War and Peace also had the odd effect of restoring my faith in doing good in the world; because if as Tolstoy argued, we are all specks in a vast world-historical drama, even those of us pretending to be in charge, it followed that everyone’s actions were at least potentially equal, and that a humble person sometimes influences events more profoundly than did generals, emperors and tsars.’

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.