Rating: 
Summary: Perfectly Wonderfull
Review: Like all of Tolstoy's novels, this book can not be praised in words. It is too high for that. No other outhor can potray the feelings of an entire nation one moment and the subltelest human feelings the next. How Tolstoy can portray a powerfull emperor in one novel and the thoughts of a hunting dog in another so vividly is a mystery to me. I'll admit, I interupted reading this halfway through when the new Harry Potter book arived so I could keep in contact with the rest of the 13-year-old world, only to return to a mushroom picking expadition that was more interesting than the entire of the previous. The thoughts of the characters are so reall, so life-like, that I can no longer enjoy other books, as there characters are to shalow.
Rating:
Summary: A Deep Emotional Read
Review: I think that everybody goes through a stage in their lives, something close to a personal renaissance or an emotional birth. I went through that during the second year of my engineering program. I must say that this book definitely started it all.I merely picked it up because the cover was so intriguing (the picture of the lady cried out to me). The story is very descriptive (I think that is how Tolstoy writes), very absorbing and very sad. I have never read a book of this caliber. The characters in the book are real and you feel like you can hold on to them. I would definitely recommend this to someone seeking for a deep emotional read.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Wonderful.
Review: Let me begin by saying this is not my typical read. This was my first attempt at a Russian novel, I don't read many translations, and I tend to shy away from any "classics" since I (mistakenly?!) think they will be too labor intensive to enjoy a few pages a night in bed after a long day at work and I have a long waiting list of "moderns" ready to be read. That said, I could not be happier (nor more surprised) to report that I LOVED THIS BOOK! I could not put it down. Definitely in my Top 5 of all-time favorites.
Rating:
Summary: The Book is magnificent, the translation is not.
Review: The book is magnificent. Just read some of the other posted reviews. The translation is less than ideal.... After working my way through half of the David Magarshack's translation, I found myself sitting on the floor in a bookstore re-reading sections of the book in other translations. This translation uses dated idioms, often (seems to) tranlate different Russian words into the same English word (judging by other translations), rarely translates the French, and often uses rather banal (maybe 'academic') wording where more emotive words could have been used to better evoke the mood of the passage.
Rating:
Summary: We All Know It Is One Of The Best.
Review: Leo Tolstoy's greatest work? Most definitely. No doubt about it. This book is everything that you could ever want. It has power, love, betrayal, sex, devastation, family, and everything in between. It is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. And, boy did I have to work to get it all done. It was long and hard, but completely worth the effort. I loved every minute of it. I found Anna's struggle mesmerizing and heartbreaking. I was filled with so many emotions that I couldn't even sort them all out until I was finished. I wept with everything last page and fell in love with the language, Russian customs, time period, and settings. I don't think that this book could have gotten any better. It's a true and wonderful masterpiece. Wonderful Classic Book!
Rating: 
Summary: Not too good, not too bad!
Review: The book started marvelously and I couldn't put it down. But after reading half of it, I began to lose interest and couldn't wait untill it was all over. It started to get annoying and irritating, all the gossiping, it felt like I was watching a soap opera. The book had a very powerfull opening, I didn't want to miss a single word, towards the end however, I was skiping pages and then chapters. It got weak and then weaker and weaker. What seemed like it was going to be the best novel I would ever read, devolved into a disapointment. It would of been a lot better if it was shorter. This book didn't have to be as long as it is.
Rating:
Summary: The Eternal Error
Review: According to Tolstoy, the genesis of Anna Karenina was derived from three specific events: (1) An idea for a story Tolstoy developed in 1870 about a woman who deserts her husband for another man, based, in part, on the life of his sister, Marya; (2) a newspaper story concerning the mistress of one of Tolstoy's neighbors, who, feeling only despair at being abandoned by her lover, hurled herself under a train; and (3) a sentence from Pushkin's Tales of the Balkins ("The guests were arriving at the country house..."), that Tolstoy read by chance one day in 1873. Supposedly, this sentence from Pushkin fueled Tolstoy's imagination to such a degree that he completed a first draft of Anna Karenina in only three weeks. A novel about the meaning of life and the role happiness does or does not play in it, Anna Karenina is the story of a married woman's adulterous affair with Count Vronsky. As foreshadowed in the book's early pages, the affair ends tragically, for both Anna and Vronsky. The novel (which Tolstoy's contemporary, Dostoyevsky, considered "a perfect work of art"), also tells the story of Constantine Levin, a gentleman farmer whose lifelong pursuit of happiness and fulfillment culminates, not in his long-awaited marriage to Kitty Shcherbatskaya, but with the advice of a simple peasant about "living rightly, in God's way." From a few simple, yet melodramatic events (and the depths of a dizzyingly fecund imagination), Tolstoy fashioned a beautiful, profound and enduring novel dealing with stark questions of both life and religious faith as seen through the eyes of the farmer, Levin. Also a morality play, Anna Karenina delves deeply into the damaging effects of society's ostracization, especially regarding the characters of Anna and Vronsky. Many consider Anna Karenina Tolstoy's most personal work and, indeed, many of the novel's scenes do mirror Tolstoy's relationship with his own wife, Sonya. Levin's courtship of Kitty and his expressions of love for her, written with chalk on a table are reflective of Tolstoy's courtship of Sonya. Even more evocative of Tolstoy, himself, is the soul-wrenching scene in which Levin gives Kitty his diaries to read, exposing his very soul to the woman he has come to love so completely. The final scenes of the novel, especially Levin's intense search for the answer to the meaning of existence are reflective of Tolstoy's own search, dramatically documented in his beautiful memoir, A Confession, and considered by many to be one of the most truthful, agonizing and soul-searching statements of authentic spirituality. The publication of Anna Karenina coincided with the end of Tolstoy's life of material and emotional luxury. From this point on, he concentrated on a deeper and more mature quest. Although he would go on to write the beautiful novel, Resurrection, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a true existential masterpiece, Tolstoy's career reached its zenith in the character of Anna Karenina and her seemingly irrational embrace of death. Anna's husband, Karenin, is often overlooked, although he is equally compelling; a complex and emotional character who briefly embraces the doctrine of Christian forgiveness in his emotional denial over the loss of Anna. No doubt the second most famous line of the book is Vronsky's startling realization: "It showed him (Vronsky) the eternal error men make in imagining that happiness consists in the realization of their desires." Almost epic in scope and poignantly detailed, Anna Karenina represents the perfect balance of drama, morality and philosophical inquiry. How are we to live our lives, the novel asks, when all the illusions we hold so close to our heart have been stripped away? What are we to believe in and cling to? With its emphasis on drama over polemic, Anna Karenina thus embodies art of the highest order. In its portrayal of man's timeless struggle to make sense out of life while coming to terms with death, both its theme and its characters remain, now and forever, timeless.
Rating: 
Summary: Russian Traditions
Review: This novel educated me with the Russian traditions and customs. I recommend this to all who want to read great classical works and enjoy some good Russian tragedy.
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing!
Review: Saying that Tolstoy is a great writer is like saying that Mozart is agreat composer. This has been noted before, I can only discover itagain for myself. Anna Karenina is a pleasure to read (again, I read it as a teenager, was impressed then. More impressed now). By the way, I read it in Hebrew in a new and beautiful translation by Nily Mirsky. Question: Levin is described by Tolstoy as a member of an old Moscow noble family. With a name "Levin"? It is a VERY Jewish name, coming from the word Levi, one of the twelve tribes. Could it be from the Khazars? A friend told me me that when the Khazars became Jewish, the nobility decided that they are all levites. INTERESTING!
Rating:
Summary: Quite simply, The Novel
Review: "Anna Karenina" is why the novel was invented. It is a colossal achievement that fully exploits the possibilities inherent in the literary form. The purpose of the 19th-century novel was to explore character and to critique society, and Tolstoy here has achieved the quintessence of both aims. The thing about Tolstoy is that you can trust him -- he is utterly honest. He doesn't revise, or simplify, or sugar-coat. He presents the human mind, in its various guises, precisely as it is. Levin, to my mind, rivals Hamlet as the most vivid, fully living character in literature, and he is probably much more self-consistent than the Melancholy Dane. Anna's story, which is more melodramatic and plot-heavy, might strike some as a flaw in comparison to Levin's. And maybe it is a flaw. But one must talk about flaws in "Anna Karenina" as one talks about flaws in Beethoven's 9th Symphony -- blemishes on a masterpiece which, if it errs, errs only in striving further than the art form is supposed to go. Tolstoy's genius at depicting character and psychology is matched by his ability to construct vivid, memorable setpieces. No one who has read "Anna Karenina" can ever forget the hay-mowing, or Vronksy's horse race, or the heartbreaking scenes of Levin's sickly brother. Even Dickens, with all his glorious phantasmagoria, never achieved what Tolstoy has done here. Tolstoy caught lightning in a bottle: homo sapiens, captured in 800-odd pages. There are only a handful of comparable achievements in all of Western art.
|
