The hardest book has got to be
That epic saga ‘War and Peace.’
It generates such guilt in me
Although it’s hailed a masterpiece.
I tried and tried to get a fix
On Rostov and Andreyevich
But stuck somewhere in eighteen six
And never worked out which was which.
Last month I joined a reading group
And this damned tome is for review,
So once again I’m in the soup
And can’t get past page ninety-two.
The ghost of Tolstoy well may laugh,
He’ll torture me till my decease
And this will be my epitaph:
She never finished ‘War and Peace’.
Gillian Ewing