In ‘War & Peace and Sonya’, Tolstoy scholar Judith Armstrong contributes to the current vogue for biographies of women whose chief distinction lies in their relationship to famous men of letters and although scrupulously researched, knowing and retelling a lot of good family stories is not the same thing as putting them to work as absorbing and captivating historical fiction.

Drawing heavily on Sonya's and Leo Tolstoy’s personal journals and letters detailing every argument and every shade of feeling and transition in their relationship, the novel also illustrates in a distinctly academic fashion the particular complexities of late 19th-century Russian culture.

The novel begins in 1862, when at the age of 34, Tolstoy and 18-year-old Sofya Andreyevna Behrs, entered into what was to become a physically passionate yet emotionally destructive marriage.

Whilst Tolstoy channelled the ensuing turbulence into creating his greatest novels; heavily based on his life with Sonya and her family, like most women of her generation, Sonya directed all of her passion and incredible energy into her relationship with her husband and 13 children, also acting as her husband's secretary, copy editor and financial manager.

Sonya and Leo struggled with the extreme passion they felt for each other, while the power of sexual attraction and Tolstoy’s inability to reconcile sexual passion with marital relations meant that as his life went on, he began to view sexuality as an evil, destructive force, with wives enslaved in a type of socially approved prostitution. 

Sonya and Tolstoy’s relationship progressively degenerated into a bitter and disillusioned arrangement where the antagonism between them ultimately led to a tortured, estranged existence.

Although these previously well documented revelations are interesting, it is essential to be a true devotee of Tolstoy’s work, in particular ‘Anna Karenina’ to fully enjoy the  relentless delivery of facts launched at us in this laborious piece of work, material which ultimately and significantly diminishes the far more fascinating singularity of Sonya’s predicament.  

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