As the first thing that Tolstoy wrote, I saw glimpses of the brilliant, but lots of rough edges too. There were some incredible passages in the book. I think the description of the thunderstorm on the way to Moscow was my favorite. But there were sections that were dull, especially in the Youth section. I have not read any Tolstoy that relies on a driving plot, but Youth seems to meander all over the place and flop around like a fish until it dies. I liked the first two sections of the book much more than the last. Tolstoy paints his “self” character as a willful and petulant child. As he grows up, he is socially awkward and neurotic. He is constantly examining every reaction to guess what others are thinking. He often describes himself as acting a certain way because he thinks that is what others want of him. In this way he is not very likeable. This neurotic side is something I have not seen in War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Tolstoy writes in a way that makes it obvious he sees these traits as former flaws. But the book ends so abruptly, (and the planned continuation was never written) that I wonder what happened to change him. Was it his time in the Crimean War that finally snapped him out of his ways? Or did he simply grow up?