A review by tiny_reader_bri
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I vowed that before 2024, I would finish Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. And after an arduous journey (817 pages 😭), I finally did.

I went into the book thinking it’d be about a passionate love affair that would withstand the test of time, but it was so much darker than that. Anna Karenina is such a fascinating character. I pitied, admired, and disliked her for some of the things she said and decisions she made. She gets ostracized from society after being unfaithful to her husband and engaging in an illicit affair with the proud Count Vronsky. Like Anna, I found him hard to like, but I pitied him nonetheless. Anna was incredibly troubled, often described an archetype of the “fallen woman,” in the sense that she lost God’s grace. There was some underlying misogyny towards Anna and the other female characters. I’m sure it was intentional. At least, I hope it was.
Anna’s fate still haunts me a little bit, but I felt it looming before it happened.

The second protagonist, Levin, is slightly more likable. He certainly has his share of flaws and spends most of the book questioning the purpose of life and tends to seek this out by use of logic. Levin loves to think and that often keeps him from embracing spirituality and faith. That description sounds eerily familiar…

Levin and Anna have many similarities, but how they conduct themselves is different.
Where Levin is able to have a healthy, loving relationship with his wife (Kitty), Anna and Vronsky are the equivalent of a dumpster fire. Maybe Tolstoy wanted to convey the difference between love and lust or truly loving someone vs loving the idea of them.

When I finished it, I didn’t know what to think. The ending felt anticlimactic to me, and I was disappointed because I invested so much time into it. But after spending some time away from it, I’ve decided I like it. It’s undeniable that Tolstoy is an incredible storyteller. He got a bit long-winded from time to time, but I learned that in his time, writers were paid according to their book’s word count. He wanted every penny. Can’t blame him, though.

I wouldn’t say Anna Karenina is a new favorite of mine, but I don’t regret reading it. I feel indifferent to the story, like after I read Wuthering Heights the first time.
I suppose the heart of the novel points back to the epigraph: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” thus, the main characters get the ending they “deserve.”
It’ll probably be 10 years before I read it again and I’m sure I’ll read it with different eyes.
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