Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - Anna Karenina

I was slightly disappointed in this book. For a book titled Anna Karenina, it has very little to do with the woman herself, and more to do with the society in which she lives. I realise that it is a "classic" and it shows a lot about the time and place in which it was written, but I was bored while reading it. The story felt as if it was like Moby Dick in terms of unnecessary tangents about anything from politics to farming methods and like Gone With the Wind in terms of character development or lack thereof. None of the characters grew, nobody learned anything, and nobody changed

(maybe with the exception of Anna Karenina herself, who went crazy and jumped in front of a train).

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satansbraten's review against another edition

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sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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ktdakotareads's review against another edition

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sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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kimveach's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book. It is so much more than a romance. I suggest that you read it as an ebook if you aren't fluent in French. The translation had many French phrases which you need to comprehend in order to understand the conversations between the characters.

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sarasbooks's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The novel Anna Karenina written by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1878 is very vast. It’s about life, death, politics, religion, duties, family, the pursuit of happiness and the meaning of life. Can women be independent? How’s does society view women? These are some of the aspects this novel gives an insight of. It gives us also an overview of life in Russia and its culture, giving this novel a richness of its own.

It was a challenging book to read, as it took me way longer to finish it than all of the books i have read so far. I was disappointed in the heroine, Anna. She isn’t admirable to me. However, i appreciated other characters such as Levin, Vronsky, Kitty and Dolly. All of them go through a change in their way of thinking and acting, and you can see them evolve. It teached me about the sometimes tragic consequences of our decisons.

The bottom line of the novel is :

“To live not for one’s needs but for God!” “.. now I say that I know the meaning of my life: it is to live for God, for the soul.” “.. my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.” - Levin

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