Posted Aug 4, 2003

I wasn't going to post a Tuesdays this week. I was going to cop out and finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

But that got me to thinking about getting sucked into a book. The first long one I just couldn't put down was The Lord of the Rings. But there was also War and Peace.

I read that one for the first time in high school. There was a copy lying around the house, I'd heard of it, and it looked like a good summer read.

My mother was tickled pink. "I read it in one sitting on a dare!" she told me proudly. I didn't ask, but I assume she meant with meal breaks and pit stops.

"Did you like it?' I asked.

"I think so."

"What's it about?'

"War and peace," she answered slyly, but although she had no recollection of the content of the book, I could tell she was still pleased that she'd performed the dare.

I didn't challenge her record. I read it in a week, and my friends were glad when I finished. I wouldn't go anywhere with them until I was done, and when they came over and managed to drag my nose out of the Modern Library Edition, all I would talk about was what was going on in the book.

I was madly in love with Prince Andre Bolkonski, but he makes it through enough of the book that I kept right on going after Tolstoy kills him off.

My favorite part of the whole book came nearer the beginning than the end, when Prince Andre is wounded on his first stint of duty. He lies on his back, disassociating from life in general and his own body in particular, and for a long paragraph or most of a page he watches the clouds in the blue sky.

I never understood what he saw in either Pierre or Natasha, and I took it personally that she betrayed him with some obnoxious officer, and went on to survive Andre, marry Pierre, and become a large happy matron.

Years later I realized that was all I remembered about the book. I was married by then, and working at Hillside. I carried it in with me to read on break.

"What's it about?" asked Donna, an upperclassman in Outdoor Education (or was it Accounting?)

I told her it was about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia as seen by a group of characters who lived through it.

"Sounds dull," she said dismissively. "I never liked classics."

"It's a soap opera," I said encouragingly. She snorted. "No, really. Where I am now, Prince Andre, a handsome and embittered widower with a young son he hardly knows, has just fallen in love with the airhead Natasha at a ball. She's a vivacious belle half his age and she'll wind up breaking his heart and marrying his best friend."

Donna's eyes lit up. "Maybe I'll borrow it when you're done," she said.

That time through, I still liked Andre, but I didn't fall for him. I wanted to invite him to dinner, then sit up late indulging in fine colloquy and in Benedictine sipped from ornate little glasses. I went so far as to price a bottle of Benedictine, but it was too costly to invest in to share with an imaginary friend.

Recently, with a strong sense of unreality, I read a review of a performance of the opera by Prokofief. The reviewer was under the impression that the opera (and so, I assumed, the book) was about Pierre.

When I was a vivacious belle, I'd missed that.

Maybe its time for the large, happy matron I've become, to reread my favorite Soap.

But first, of course, I have to finish The Order of the Phoenix.

By Ruby Jung. All rights reserved to the story. I made the background and you're welcome to copy it and use it.