I read too much and write too little and my head ends up overfull and a little too confused.

Characters march in with their dirty boots and put up a righteous din. “Guillotine, guillotine! Shu shu shu!” They shout, they boast, they mope and argue and cry and proclaim.

There’s word of a policeman, tied to the back of a bear, floating down the Neva. A blind musician tunes his zither and plays to a married man’s seduction of an Egyptian singer. And there’s another man, off to the side, who relives the passionate bullfights of Pamplona, though he is impotent to passion itself.

I invite them willingly, drunkards and English ladies alike, but I must turn this crowded tavern into a salon or I will never hear any of them properly. We’ll see whether Dolokhov comes in from the window and behaves himself.

Reviews here at the Masthead will be more than reviews, and I forewarn that I cannot always avoid spoilers (though I’ll try to hide such nefarious things under the carpeting of “read more.”)