Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
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Book Reviews of Anna Karenina
Book Review: Magnificent and Tragic
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the greatest novels of all time. Once you read it straight through and experience its immensity and depth, you can keep it around and dip into it when you need to be reminded that a work of art -- novel, play, film, what have you -- can give you not only continued enjoyment but profound truths. Tolstoy is one of the few writers I've ever read -- indeed possibly the only writer I've ever read -- who really treats men and women equally. Now in later life he wrote many provocative things about gender, but at the time he wrote Anna Karenina, he saw the soul inside a human with unlimited generosity. Note his loving attention to the emotions and suffering of the young adolescent Kitty Scherbatsky who becomes in fact a heroine of the work, and how he takes her every bit as seriously as he takes any male character in the book. If you go on to War and Peace, you'll find the same inquiry into the depths of the soul in total resregard of masculine/feminine identity. It has been said that Tolstoy raised the novel to the level of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. I believe that he did. I believe he did because, being Russian, receiving the novel as something of an imported form from England and/or France, he did not have any prejudice towards it as some sort of "domestic" or "popular" form. In other words, no one told him the novel couldn't be great. And he made it great. Read this book, even if you have to carry it around with you for a while. I recommend the old translation by Constance Garnett, but there are other ones.Book Review: Tolstoy: let him touch your life with this gem...
Summary: 5 Stars
As a college student, I don't get much time for 'light reading'. But for whatever reason, I found myself picking up Anna Karenina last semester and barely able to put it down in order to read my textbooks. I still don't know how I did that. Tolstoy is just absolutely amazing in this book! I don't even know how to properly express the way that this book moves you this way and that way and then back and forth again. Oblonsky, Anna, Versonky, Levin, Kitty and the rest are just so realistic that even though I am living more than 100 years later in a completely different society, I can still sympathize with them while also noticing how some people I know are semi-embodiments of these characters.
I could go on for hours about this book. It easily replaces my previously favorite book, "Gone with the Wind" (much better than the movie by the way). Prior to this book Tolstoy was very materialistic and motivated by the things of the world. After this book he was singly focused on God and the common man. This book blends these two places in his life in such a beautiful way. I have been so blessed to have the opportunity to read this book as well as several others by Tolstoy. If you don't like long books, or ones that can get slightly complicated with the number of characters, than this book is not for you. If you can handle these things, than read it. You can really benefit from it. Plus, anyone with the middle name of Nikolaevich just HAS to be interesting...
Book Review: Endlessly Fascinating and Spectacular Storytelling
Summary: 5 Stars
Tolstoy had talent to spare, and this novel seems to incorporate and display every bit of it. From sumptious parallel storylines through overwhelming set pieces done as well any in all of fiction, this is one sensational novel. The more you enjoy plotting and character, the more you will enjoy how effortlessly Tolstoy deploys his actors and actresses.
Among many highlights is the great ball scene, easily the finest in an age replete with examples; and the extraordinary pictoral social panorama Tolstoy unfolds at the race track; this later could only have been written by the author of the great battle scenes of War and Peace. Tolstoy's depiction of the train station meeting between the doomed Anna and her lover-to-be Vronsky rises to extraordinary mythic heights, devoid of cheap melodrama through Tolstoy's uncanny sense for fleeting details and his remarkable empathy for the poetics of human interactions.
Anyone interested in reading more about this most amazing work should first peruse Nabokov's scintillating essay on Anna Karenina. This is available in Essays on Russian Literature, published after Nabokov's death. Taken from his lecture notes from classes given while he was at Cornell, Nabokov offers an eagle-eyed view of details and cross-references generally missed by those unable to read the novel in its original Russian. (The other chapters on Russian literature are equally engrossing, particularly his fabulous essay on Gogol's Dead Souls.)
Book Review: A tale of tales
Summary: 5 Stars
What we have here is a conglomeration of short stories sewn together into one wonderful tale. For the most part, the stories swirl around the life of Anna Karenina, a lady that has conformed with her life. She lives in a comfortable marriage and a boy that she loves to death. But that safe world would quickly be turned upside down when love, the one thing that she really is missing, comes calling in the name of Count Vronsky.Anna is torn between what is right and what is desired. Her desires trump righteousness and she succumbs to the yearning arms of the nobleman. After they pursue their passion, the happily-ever-after ending seems to avoid them. Is the Count willing to continue their relationship? Is she truly happy with this adulterous affair or will she want more?
In the middle of the affair is another relationship begging to blossom. Levin, a calm and collective farmer that has deep thought about life itself is in love with Kitty. However, Kitty has a crush on the Count and that throws blinders on what is right in front of her. Eventually, the story will show two types of relationships with these four characters. Anna and Vronsky's sinfully passionate versus the path of logic of Levin and Kitty.
Overall, the story is one that cannot be ignored. For better or worse, you will have to opinionate on it. It forces you to like it or leave it. There is no room for indifference. I enjoyed the tale and recommend it.
Book Review: Heartbreaking
Summary: 5 Stars
I am grateful to be able to read this book in its native language. I've read it for the first time in high school back in Russia as it was part of the curriculum. Re-reading it now, some 20 years later I see and appreciate it in a different light.
Tolstoy is a great story teller. His writing is simplistic and conveying. His characters are well developed and make reader care.
Anna, Levin, Dolly, Kitty, Karenin are main and thus better described characters. Reading through the book, I first get annoyed with Anna and her way of living, abandoning her child for a man as superficial as Vronsky. I think Tolstoy made Vronsky's character a bit one-dimensional on purpose. It is difficult to care for him and his motives and to me he was just a mere object without real ability to feel or empathize.
As Dolly has conflicting feelings towards Anna. I relate, moving from great pity and understanding to almost a rejection.
In the end understanding the feeling of great despair, chaos and sad realizations described in the last minutes of her life from the flashing moments of the happy memories to the horror that she can't turn back and undo and that it is over.
I enjoyed reading about Levin and his struggles with understanding the meaning of life but find it difficult to accept/understand his come bouts with religion in the end.
All in all a very interesting read.