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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
With these captivating words, the supreme Russian artist, Leo Tolstoy, opens his magnificent masterpiece, Anna Karenina, and grips at my heart from that first paragraph until the closing words, 963 pages later. It is impossible to express everything I felt and experienced and learned from inhaling every word of Anna Karenina and yet I remain pertinacious to attempt so, a month after its completion. During this time, I have tossed one book after another aside, not because I found them to be in poor taste, only because it has been impossible to reap pleasure from lesser purity, lesser prose, lesser richness, anything lesser than Anna K.
Reading Tolstoy is pure ecstasy ... it is falling in love anew with reading, with words, with characters, with thoughts, with dialogues, and with Anna and Tolstoy both – and finishing Anna K is that first love’s broken heart, never again will a novel touch me this profoundly, move me this deeply, and ache me so much. At least, I am sorely convinced as such today.
In November of 2008, I randomly picked up Irina Reyn’s “What Happened to Anna K?”, a modern take on Tolstoy’s original creation in print. An anomaly of choice for me as I am not one for either sequels or adaptations of books into another author’s versions. Can we not let the original remain the end-all and be-all for that literary work? But Reyn’s authentic Anna K. was an obsessive read for me. The author is extremely gifted and she will always be the one to have first introduced me to Anna, even if portrayed as a modern day 21st century Russian-American living in NYC! A month or so later, I picked up my hardcover Anna Karenina (Maude translation from Every Man’s library) but the book settled down on my shelf where I kept staring at it with intimidation.
"One day I am going to read it!", I would say. Doubt befriended procrastination and a year of waiting went by. Now, I regret empowering either of those evils in my mind; reading Tolstoy is for anyone and everyone and the pleasure is immense for one spectrum of readers to another. In February of 2009, an angel of a friend promised to keep me company as we set out to read and finish Anna K together. Perhaps the only other thing that can add sweetness to reading Anna K. is to share the journey with a friend. In this post, I beg forgiveness for length as I pay tribute and gratitude to the world that Tolstoy weaved for us in his genius art.
The use of cohesive, comprehensive and exquisite prose:
No word feels redundant. No passage seems irrelevant. No character is without a purpose in the dozens upon dozens introduced. Not a word or paragraph would I wish to eliminate even among topics I found challenging to read. The best surprise of all on reading Anna K. was the ease of reading Tolstoy. I had prepared for a highly complex Russian novel; instead I found one to be of great depth, scale and detail and yet not lacking in simplicity and purity of language. The plot of this great novel resembles a tree with all the characters and situations echoing the staggering number of branches, each extending here and there, growing this way or that way, varying greatly in size and shape and form, some withstanding the wind while others snapping in parts but not a single branch falls from the foundation; likewise, not a single character or scene is less than essential to the whole of this novel. No, the exquisitely written Anna Karenina preserves unity in all its depth and breadth.
The use of humor:
Tolstoy takes the time to entertain us. Almost always, the humor is a sad irony on a twisted character’s view on life, usually Oblonsky attracting the most laughs followed by Levin, two of the prominent characters. The humor, entertaining and unique, is never without a purpose; in fact, we get to know Oblonsky mostly through his comical behavior and his bewilderment of the ordinary. The other passing characters such as the painter in Italy and Vronsky’s friends add delightful humor to the pages, all the while exposing the main characters in more depth to the reader. Other times, the humor takes the form of author’s opinion in narration, again stemming from the irony or pretense observed in manners and ways of the Russian elite society. This use of self-deprecating humor, as Tolstoy himself was a Count and lived among Russia’s highest social class, gives to us the author in all his sincerity and honesty.
The use of French language:
To my delight, Tolstoy incorporates frequent French dialogue, idioms and expressions in his character’s interactions throughout. I had not been privy to the extent of French culture and language influence among the Russian elite. I had been feeling slightly robbed for not reading Anna K. in Russian because there are no doubt meanings lost even in a translation that the author himself blessed (The Maude couple was a contemporary of Tolstoy and he had approved of this translation), following the French first-hand as written in Tolstoy’s own words was a small relief.
The use of Omniscient Point of View:
Tolstoy is a genius of a story teller. In the omniscient point of view, the author is know-all and tell-all and with his realism style of writing, depicting of people as they appear in everyday life, he shines an eternal light on his art. How smooth the transitions come about as Tolstoy switches his role of a narrator: from Dolly’s broken heart after her husband’s acts of infidelity to Kitty’s high hopes and subsequent misery at a dance ball, from Levin’s mad love for his land and his religious doubts to Vronsky’s self-love, eccentricities, and adoration for Anna, from Karenin’s anguish and meditations on revenge in reaction to Anna’s infidelity to Anna’s own fully exposed heart and soul with which the author indulges the reader. Tolstoy can occupy the mind of an old man equally as well as that of a young girl, and just as easily the thoughts of a mother, a child, a priest, a farmer, and even a dog (at one point, Levin’s dog becomes the narrator hunting for birds and observing life and people, all in a most realistic nature!).
With the timeless classics of our time, the lines between reality (what actually happened) and fiction (what happened only in one’s imagination) sometimes become blurry. With Anna K., there was no blurring for me; in fact, I felt quite convinced that Anna must have existed in more than just my mind; she seems ever more real and alive than most people I have met in person in my whole life. Ah the powers of genius men and women with pen!
In every page and passage of Anna Karenina, I strip through a rainbow of emotions and I do it again on the following page. There is either the amazement from descriptions which brought everything and everyone to life for me, the amusement from observations on culture, society and humanity, the enjoyment of brilliant dialogue and the movement from immense articulation of feeling and thought; there is the thrill of short-lived bliss preceding the compassion and sadness for those suffering from one of life’s harsh turns, or simply the sheer joys of reading a pure and timeless classic, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
For a more in-depth review, check out Prolific Living - Anna K review to see my unabridged and original posting of Anna Karenina review on the blog.
With these captivating words, the supreme Russian artist, Leo Tolstoy, opens his magnificent masterpiece, Anna Karenina, and grips at my heart from that first paragraph until the closing words, 963 pages later. It is impossible to express everything I felt and experienced and learned from inhaling every word of Anna Karenina and yet I remain pertinacious to attempt so, a month after its completion. During this time, I have tossed one book after another aside, not because I found them to be in poor taste, only because it has been impossible to reap pleasure from lesser purity, lesser prose, lesser richness, anything lesser than Anna K.
Reading Tolstoy is pure ecstasy ... it is falling in love anew with reading, with words, with characters, with thoughts, with dialogues, and with Anna and Tolstoy both – and finishing Anna K is that first love’s broken heart, never again will a novel touch me this profoundly, move me this deeply, and ache me so much. At least, I am sorely convinced as such today.
In November of 2008, I randomly picked up Irina Reyn’s “What Happened to Anna K?”, a modern take on Tolstoy’s original creation in print. An anomaly of choice for me as I am not one for either sequels or adaptations of books into another author’s versions. Can we not let the original remain the end-all and be-all for that literary work? But Reyn’s authentic Anna K. was an obsessive read for me. The author is extremely gifted and she will always be the one to have first introduced me to Anna, even if portrayed as a modern day 21st century Russian-American living in NYC! A month or so later, I picked up my hardcover Anna Karenina (Maude translation from Every Man’s library) but the book settled down on my shelf where I kept staring at it with intimidation.
"One day I am going to read it!", I would say. Doubt befriended procrastination and a year of waiting went by. Now, I regret empowering either of those evils in my mind; reading Tolstoy is for anyone and everyone and the pleasure is immense for one spectrum of readers to another. In February of 2009, an angel of a friend promised to keep me company as we set out to read and finish Anna K together. Perhaps the only other thing that can add sweetness to reading Anna K. is to share the journey with a friend. In this post, I beg forgiveness for length as I pay tribute and gratitude to the world that Tolstoy weaved for us in his genius art.
The use of cohesive, comprehensive and exquisite prose:
No word feels redundant. No passage seems irrelevant. No character is without a purpose in the dozens upon dozens introduced. Not a word or paragraph would I wish to eliminate even among topics I found challenging to read. The best surprise of all on reading Anna K. was the ease of reading Tolstoy. I had prepared for a highly complex Russian novel; instead I found one to be of great depth, scale and detail and yet not lacking in simplicity and purity of language. The plot of this great novel resembles a tree with all the characters and situations echoing the staggering number of branches, each extending here and there, growing this way or that way, varying greatly in size and shape and form, some withstanding the wind while others snapping in parts but not a single branch falls from the foundation; likewise, not a single character or scene is less than essential to the whole of this novel. No, the exquisitely written Anna Karenina preserves unity in all its depth and breadth.
The use of humor:
Tolstoy takes the time to entertain us. Almost always, the humor is a sad irony on a twisted character’s view on life, usually Oblonsky attracting the most laughs followed by Levin, two of the prominent characters. The humor, entertaining and unique, is never without a purpose; in fact, we get to know Oblonsky mostly through his comical behavior and his bewilderment of the ordinary. The other passing characters such as the painter in Italy and Vronsky’s friends add delightful humor to the pages, all the while exposing the main characters in more depth to the reader. Other times, the humor takes the form of author’s opinion in narration, again stemming from the irony or pretense observed in manners and ways of the Russian elite society. This use of self-deprecating humor, as Tolstoy himself was a Count and lived among Russia’s highest social class, gives to us the author in all his sincerity and honesty.
The use of French language:
To my delight, Tolstoy incorporates frequent French dialogue, idioms and expressions in his character’s interactions throughout. I had not been privy to the extent of French culture and language influence among the Russian elite. I had been feeling slightly robbed for not reading Anna K. in Russian because there are no doubt meanings lost even in a translation that the author himself blessed (The Maude couple was a contemporary of Tolstoy and he had approved of this translation), following the French first-hand as written in Tolstoy’s own words was a small relief.
The use of Omniscient Point of View:
Tolstoy is a genius of a story teller. In the omniscient point of view, the author is know-all and tell-all and with his realism style of writing, depicting of people as they appear in everyday life, he shines an eternal light on his art. How smooth the transitions come about as Tolstoy switches his role of a narrator: from Dolly’s broken heart after her husband’s acts of infidelity to Kitty’s high hopes and subsequent misery at a dance ball, from Levin’s mad love for his land and his religious doubts to Vronsky’s self-love, eccentricities, and adoration for Anna, from Karenin’s anguish and meditations on revenge in reaction to Anna’s infidelity to Anna’s own fully exposed heart and soul with which the author indulges the reader. Tolstoy can occupy the mind of an old man equally as well as that of a young girl, and just as easily the thoughts of a mother, a child, a priest, a farmer, and even a dog (at one point, Levin’s dog becomes the narrator hunting for birds and observing life and people, all in a most realistic nature!).
With the timeless classics of our time, the lines between reality (what actually happened) and fiction (what happened only in one’s imagination) sometimes become blurry. With Anna K., there was no blurring for me; in fact, I felt quite convinced that Anna must have existed in more than just my mind; she seems ever more real and alive than most people I have met in person in my whole life. Ah the powers of genius men and women with pen!
In every page and passage of Anna Karenina, I strip through a rainbow of emotions and I do it again on the following page. There is either the amazement from descriptions which brought everything and everyone to life for me, the amusement from observations on culture, society and humanity, the enjoyment of brilliant dialogue and the movement from immense articulation of feeling and thought; there is the thrill of short-lived bliss preceding the compassion and sadness for those suffering from one of life’s harsh turns, or simply the sheer joys of reading a pure and timeless classic, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
For a more in-depth review, check out Prolific Living - Anna K review to see my unabridged and original posting of Anna Karenina review on the blog.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
oh tolstoy, i love you.
just like with war and peace i was completely absorbed in this world, felt like i was on intimate terms with the entire cast of characters and was moving along beside them. i’ve been picking this up and putting it down for months, it’s so full of life that i’ve been able to savour it in little instalments and still feel like im in there with ‘em in the interim.
kitty and levin were gorgeous. oblonsky was a rascal but still so loveable. dolly was so full of life i swear i met her. alexey alexandrovitch repulsed me when anna was repulsed and won my sympathy and respect immediately after. vronsky and anna were so toxic it made you wanna die! but in the best way! anna’s descent and the societal implications and consistent unpicking of sexist double standards and patriarchal ideas ?? fabulous.
towards the end anna was so unbearably irritating i almost fell out of love a little, but on reflection i think the steady warping of her character made for fascinating reading and that flashing moment of regret when it was too late to change her mind will haunt me for years to come.
just like with war and peace i was completely absorbed in this world, felt like i was on intimate terms with the entire cast of characters and was moving along beside them. i’ve been picking this up and putting it down for months, it’s so full of life that i’ve been able to savour it in little instalments and still feel like im in there with ‘em in the interim.
kitty and levin were gorgeous. oblonsky was a rascal but still so loveable. dolly was so full of life i swear i met her. alexey alexandrovitch repulsed me when anna was repulsed and won my sympathy and respect immediately after. vronsky and anna were so toxic it made you wanna die! but in the best way! anna’s descent and the societal implications and consistent unpicking of sexist double standards and patriarchal ideas ?? fabulous.
towards the end anna was so unbearably irritating i almost fell out of love a little, but on reflection i think the steady warping of her character made for fascinating reading and that flashing moment of regret when it was too late to change her mind will haunt me for years to come.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reading this convinces me I should read more classics. The translation was excellent, and made the language almost breezy in a way that older books often aren’t, although I’m curious how much of that is the original text versus this translation.
Things I liked:
1. The love story of Levin and Katia, while a slow burn, made me blaze through the first half of the book.
2. The footnotes were exceptionally helpful and taught a ton of interesting tidbits about Russia at the time of the novel.
3. Tolstoy can truly be quite profound at times. The bits about birth and parenthood hit me particularly hard at this point in my life.
A few small nitpicks prevented this from a five star read for me:
1. The pacing got to me a bit around the half way point. I still enjoyed it, but it didn’t grip me quite as much.
2. The Anna plotline, despite being the namesake, did t appeal to me quite as much as Levin. It was still engaging at times, but in the back half of the book the inevitability (I knew the approximate ending from the introduction) in combination to the slow pacing made me want to get back to Levin’s sections.
3. This was almost more humorous, but Levin had so many epiphanies (the book even ends on one). The last one has a feeling of definitiveness to it that maybe is supposed to make the previous ones as frivolous as they felt to me, but I may be reading into Tolstoys intent. Especially since Levin is a Tolstoy self-insert.
Things I liked:
1. The love story of Levin and Katia, while a slow burn, made me blaze through the first half of the book.
2. The footnotes were exceptionally helpful and taught a ton of interesting tidbits about Russia at the time of the novel.
3. Tolstoy can truly be quite profound at times. The bits about birth and parenthood hit me particularly hard at this point in my life.
A few small nitpicks prevented this from a five star read for me:
1. The pacing got to me a bit around the half way point. I still enjoyed it, but it didn’t grip me quite as much.
2. The Anna plotline, despite being the namesake, did t appeal to me quite as much as Levin. It was still engaging at times, but in the back half of the book the inevitability (I knew the approximate ending from the introduction) in combination to the slow pacing made me want to get back to Levin’s sections.
3. This was almost more humorous, but Levin had so many epiphanies (the book even ends on one). The last one has a feeling of definitiveness to it that maybe is supposed to make the previous ones as frivolous as they felt to me, but I may be reading into Tolstoys intent. Especially since Levin is a Tolstoy self-insert.
challenging
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
heart stopping. How the fuck does Tolstoy understand what goes on in the head of a tormented woman??? The Anna chapters were uncomfortably revealing, the Levin/country life chapters idyllic and nostalgic. Every character flawed but deeply sympathetic. Well maybe not her first husband, weirdo.