krep___ 's review for:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

DID NOT FINISH: 23%

---

 I got about a quarter of the way through (which is the length of an average novel) and decided to move on because life is too short. Perhaps because of its length or perhaps just because of a general "defect" in Tolstoy as a writer, the book has little in the way of a story driving it forward. There is a love affair that's just beginning to get warmed up, but the reader has no reason to care about the participants in it. In general, interesting stuff doesn't really happen, or, if it does, it's happening at a snail's pace, dragged out by people talking a lot but not about anything a reader would care much about. Maybe we'd care what they talked about if we cared about the characters. It's mildly interesting as a glimpse of Russian society of that time period which is different from English society, but, other than that, I see no reason not to stick with Jane Austen for this type of stuff. She's much better at it. (I do have to admit that the English translation feels very natural and unforced.)