Poignantly, [Sonya Tolstoy] asks why it is that people who write so eloquently about universal love and the possibility of simple, selfless communal life create such emotional havoc around them. (…)
But her question remains an unsettling one: how do we make sense of a spiritual vision for human reconciliation that apparently can’t deliver at the most immediate domestic level? Sonya presses unmercifully and unhelpfully on this nerve; and she also recognises the ambiguity surrounding high-profile radicalism where a global reputation effectively protects the radical from the consequences that might follow for ordinary mortals – for good and ill.
