Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina 🇬🇧 + 🇩🇪

I have a book recommendation for all of you who want to take part in a journey to the High Society of the late 19th-century Russia 🇷🇺 . There you are going to meet the captivating woman Anna, as the title implies. But she is by far not the only main character of the book. Parallel to hers there is the story of Levin, a man with many thoughts and doubts. And you are getting to know the people surrounding Anna and Levin intimately, whose lives meet or are interwoven with one another. If your reading experience is anything like mine, you are going to feel for all of them. You are going to be vexed with them, you might want to shake them, hug them or you'll be smiling into your book.

It is a telling about society, morals, politics, love, marriages, affairs, double standards, prejudices, the meaning of life, religion and the judgement of others. After reading Anna Karenina I've put a few more Russian Classics on my TBR-list. It is a long book so there is much to say about it. If you're not into the politics of farming you might want to speed read a few pages. However, I was fine with that, since I was so drawn into the intertwined lives of the characters. They are FAR from perfect and Tolstoy has put me to the test: Who am I to judge?

💡 I do have a tip for reading this brick stone of a book 🧱 : It is a story in eight parts. I marked these in the hardcopy to see my reading progress. And the chapters are really short, mostly less than five pages long, so it was not much of a commitment to say: Just one more chapter!

One of my favorite citations, regarding marriage: He was happy, but having embarked on a family life he saw at every step that it was not at all what he had anticipated. At every step he took he felt as a man would feel who, after admiring the smooth happy motion of a little boat upon the water, had himself got into the boat. He found that besides sitting quietly without rocking he had to keep a lookout, not for a moment forget where he was going, or that there was water under his feet, and that he had to row, although it hurt his unaccustomed hands; in short, that it only looked easy, but to do it, though very delightful, was very difficult.

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Ich habe eine Buchempfehlung für alle von euch, die sich gerne auf eine Zeitreise in die High Society des späten 19. Jahrhundert nach Russland 🇷🇺 begeben möchten. Dort triffst Du Anna, wie man es vom Titel her vermutet. Aber Du triffst auch Levin, einen sehr nachdenklichen Mann, dessen Geschichte parallel zu der von Anna verläuft. Rund um Anna und Levin gibt viele weitere interessante Charaktere mit denen Du vertraut wirst. Wenn Deine Leseerfahrung auch nur so ähnlich ist wie meine, wirst mit ihnen mitfühlen: wütend sein, sie schütteln oder umarmen wollen und manchmal vor Freude breit in Dein Buch grinsen.

Es ist eine Erzählung über die Gesellschaft, Moral, Politik, Liebe, Ehe, Affären, Doppelmoral, Vorurteile, den Sinn des Lebens, Religion und das Urteilen über andere. Nachdem ich dieses Buch beendet habe, sind direkt ein paar weitere russische Klassiker auf meine Leseliste gewandert. Es gibt ein paar Kapitel die über schneller überflogen habe (Politik der Farmwirtschaft zu der Zeit), was für mich aber völlig okay war, wurde ich doch so in den Bann der ineinander verwobenen Leben gezogen. Die Charaktere sind bei weitem nicht perfekt, aber Tolstoy hat mich auf die Probe gestellt: Wer bin ich, dass ich urteilen sollte?

💡 Ich habe noch einen Tipp zur Bewältigung dieses Ziegelsteins 🧱 von Buch: Es ist in acht Teilen erzählt, die habe ich mir markiert um besser meinen Fortschritt zu sehen. Außerdem sind die Kapitel meistens keine fünf Seiten lang. Da fällt es leicht zu sagen: Nur noch ein Kapitel!

Content Warnings

kari_f's review against another edition

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Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Funnily enough, my first introduction to Anna Karenina was through my favorite children’s series, A Series of Unfortunate Events. According to one of the characters, “The central theme of Anna Karenina… is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy." I always knew I wanted to read the book eventually, but the idea of reading Tolstoy has always felt daunting.

On the surface, this is a story about family, loyalty, and love. Looking deeper, though, the books acts as social critique on a variety of topics that include family duty and relationship, (in)fidelity, the purposes and realities of marriage, societal reputations and the jealousy within social groups, hearing vs. understanding, political reform, self-centeredness vs. others-centeredness, gender inequality, hypocrisy, faith, ideas on industry and progress, and the contrasts between country living and city life.

The character stories are riddled with metaphor and allegory, with outside events aligning to inner attitudes and occurrences. Just one example is a country house where one of the families resides for the summer. A character promised their spouse that the house had the necessary work done in order to comfortably reside in it. Upon arriving, though, the rest of the family finds that it has nice curtains and décor while the functional parts of the house have fallen into a state of disrepair. The situation with the house mirrors several of the marriages in the book; one spouse thinks by making things look all right, they will be better, while the other spouse is left to deal with the consequences and/or do the major repair work.

While there are a few places where the story was slow (agricultural information, anyone?), there was a LOT to take in! Multiple characters with great arcs and evolutions, dramatic events, and plenty of commentary about Russian culture make this a book to be savored over a longer period of time. (Aka, this isn’t a book to stay up all night reading, but rather something to read in smaller chunks so that you can take your time, analyze, consider, and reflect.)

On a surface level, this is a domestic (and often sad) story about individuals, but the revelations and emotions apply to the greater world around them.

Content Warnings

wlarianna's review against another edition

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4.5

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sophieduncan's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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