The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilych isn't my first Tolstoy.  That would be War and Peace (the foreword to Ivan Ilych talks about how Tolstoy used W&P as a vehicle to discuss theories of history!!!) and I followed it up a year or two later with Anna Karenina.  But Ivan Ilych wouldn't have made it onto my reading list if not for it being a book club selection at The Deliberate Reader, because it is a novella, clocking in at around 75 pages depending on your edition and format.  Starting with the funeral of the eponymous Ivan Ilych, the story then jumps back to the beginning of his fall, first slow and then fast, in a series of short chapters.

I don't really like short stories because I typically don't find them to have enough substance for me.  There are some exceptions, of course; Neil Gaiman can write an amazing fantasy short story when the mood strikes him, and I've read some absolutely wonderful literary ones, as well.  Unfortunately for me, Ivan Ilych didn't fall into this wonderful character.  It is exactly what it purports to be: an account of Ilych's death.  Always wanting more and better, his greed drives him to spend beyond his means to no success, and it's in the process of this spending and remodeling of a new home that he quite literally falls, injuring himself in the process.  The injury initially seems minor, but drags him down towards a slow and painful death that's not only torturous to him, but to everyone around him, none of whom seem to particularly like him to begin with.  In the process of dying, Ilych reflects on his life--he feels that he has been wronged by dying, because he lived as he should have, though questions of things like love and meaning come to him as he lies in excruciating pain for weeks before passing away.

This is a contemplative story, and one that's probably not suited for everyone at every point in life.  Several of Ilych's acquaintances reflect on how he might die, but they couldn't possibly, and that's something that I think a lot of readers can empathize with.  After all, most of us don't spend a lot of time dwelling on our own mortality, and I suppose getting us to do so was part of Tolstoy's goal in writing this tale.  Ilych is not an interesting person; he's a mid-level bureaucrat in the justice system and his life is not exactly filled with adventure.  He wants to better himself and sees money as a way to do that.  He has family issues.  Most of us share these qualities, to some degree, as well as some rather unlikable ones that those close to us come to know.  In this way, though we might not like Ilych, I think we can probably understand where he's coming from, why he finds his demise so unfair, etc.  In this, I think Tolstoy did a very good job.

The problem?  This story isn't very interesting.  It's not really supposed to be, I guess--contemplative if definitely more its vein.  While this has its purpose, it doesn't make for a very riveting read.  This was a story I found myself wandering away from again and again, and it took me a surprising amount of time to get through less than a hundred pages.  It has its time and place, and I think it's actually quite good in that regard; it just didn't strike me at this time.

Based on the story's clear merit, I'm going to write it higher than I would on pure enjoyment.  I can see myself "enjoying" this more in a more melancholy or contemplative mood, and it's one I could potentially return to at some point, which isn't something I'd say about most tales of this length.

4 stars out of 5.