"A skillful tapestry. . . .
The Last Station illumines the larger than fiction life of a literary giant."
--USA Today "Utterly satisfying. . . . A loving and thoughtful rendering of the complex character of Leo Tolstoy. . . . Parini captures marvelously the paradoxical nature of this genius whose mind and body seemed ever to be at war."
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Washington Post Book World "Fascinating. . . . Parini has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of Tolstoy."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review "A subtle masterpiece. . . . Tolstoy himself would probably have recognized the work of a true artist."
--The Times Literary Supplement "One of those rare works of fiction that manages to demonstrate both scrupulous historical research and true originality of voice and perception. . . . What lifts this book high above most historical novels is Jay Parini's remarkable ability to enter the minds of his characters."
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The New York Times Book Review "A powerful story. . . . Witty [and] immensely moving. . . . Parini draws the reader into the tumult of the Tolstoy household."
--Christian Science Monitor "One of the best historical novels written in the last twenty years."
--Gore Vidal
"Vivid and moving. . . . It is to Jay Parini's credit that he has been able to flesh out the saga and make it ever new, to give it a shape and resonance we might have thought unimaginable."
--Newsday "This wonderful book combines scholarship and sensitive re-creation of a man's struggle to be true to himself and to others."
--Dallas Morning News "
The Last Station offers proof that the historical novel has a lot left to say to and about literature. And any novel with as perfectly beautiful a final sentence as this one deserves to be read all the way through."
--Philadelphia Inquirer "Poets who write novels are a strange and wonderful breed, in love with language as well as character. In
The Last Station, Jay Parini has tackled an awesomely ambitious novel and succeeded brilliantly."
--Erica Jong
"Tolstoy imagined--and illuminated."
--Boston Globe "[A] coup of period re-creation. . . . [Parini] is very good at showing how an artist or visionary can be at once idealistic, mundane and incompetently avaricious."
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Chicago Tribune "Jay Parini has written a stylish, beautifully paced and utterly beguiling novel."
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The Sunday Times (London)
"Entertaining. . . . A three-dimensional portrait of a complex literary figure. . . . Biographers have described the events of Tolstoy's life in great detail, but none so insightfully and eloquently as Jay Parini in
The Last Station."
--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "A gem of a historical novel. . . . A novel with a lyric tone that manages to extract excitement from an unlikely subject."
--Newark Star-Ledger "A searching view of the last year in the life of the author of
War and Peace. . . . A kaleidoscopically rich and skillful novel."
--Publishers Weekly "An impressively knowing and sensitive performance, a wistful late twentieth-century tribute to the giant conflicts of a more titanic age."
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The Observer (London)