Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, by Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Judson Rosengrant. Penguin 2012 edition. The three main chapters represent the narrator's description of those early parts of his life growing up on his family's country estate, moving to Moscow, and on to his early university days.
I found myself wrapped up in this little trilogy of...what, memoirs? Autobiographical writings? Fiction in the form of memoir? I came to love the family characters and friends. Surely, it must be Tolstoy himself. He surprises me, as when he writes lovingly of his father, but then bluntly alludes to an affair his father had. It's Tolstoy. The unexpected details, ideas, perspectives. The lovingly detailed passages of happiness and sadness. Some of it gets tedious. There is lots that is unformed. But it's Tolstoy. I could happily re-read it.
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