The Death of Ivan Ilyich

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Moving and progressively grimmer as the story develops - Rated
The thoughts and feelings of a man towards his family and those around him as he gets progressively more ill and is then dying from a wasting disease that sounds like cancer. The opening chapters are quite light-hearted with some ruefully amusing reflections on marriage and attitudes towards ones career, but then the mood becomes much darker and he ends being cynical about his family, seeing them as wishing his death to come sooner so they can be free of the burden of caring for him. A short story but one with a lot to say about the human condition and by no means necessarily tied to its Russian background.

short for this author but still genial - Rated
Ivan Ilych is a magistrate in a province out of Moscow. He's the pure sample of a sort of functionarial middle class plenty of mediocrity. However indeed Ilych thinks about himself he's an important foreman because he's not as other Russian judges, driven by passions and immoderate, but he never let see any emotion in his decisions. Unfortunately, Ivan falls badly ill significantly just when he goes to open his new house at the peak of his career when he's hanging some curtains -a stupid task for so brilliant man, here too much impatient- and he receives a bad hurt. I think from this incident Tolstoi, which in real life hated the physicians, darkens the nature of the infirmity of Ivan confusing the symptoms of these bad hit in the abdomen than becomes very painful. Truly I think as Tolstoi later describes the disease, these are an abdominal cancer. As it were, Ivan's wife calls the more reputed doctors, but the physicians are presented as a bunch of true idiots and Ivan Ilych goes from bad to poor and finally ends in the worst. Furthermore his wife is unable to accept these situation while Ilych surrenders to the disease and the terrible pain, that only a mujik or illiterate Russian peasant is capable to relief, so the author recurs to his permanent idea that only "pure" uncontaminated people are good enough to suffer and know the truth of life, a very discussable opinion. This short novel I think contains all the genius of Tolstoi in a condensed form, as if were War and Peace, and exposes a masterpiece at the reach of everybody.

Far better than War & Peace and Anna Karenina - Rated
Most people think of War&Peace and Anna Karenina, when they think of Tolstoy. This is a shame. The three stories in this book summarise Tolstoy's philosophy on human life and happiness more succinctly than his previous efforts.

Tolstoy believes that human happiness comes by serving other people. His description of Ivan Ilyich dying and repenting over his life is moving and a good example of how Tolstoy weaves his philosophy in story-telling.

Happy ever after is a tale which Turgenev may have written - it is a classic romantic tale written from the woman's perspective. It describes how love can change between two people from a sensuous to a more platonic and stable love.

Final Verdict - do not be put off with W+P or AK, and do not think that they are all Tolstoy has to offer.