Rating: 
Summary: A wise choice
Review: This superb novel is reminiscent of another that made its debut about twenty years prior: Madame Bovary. Interesting to note is that both authors, one Russian, the other French, lived during the same time period, and brilliantly wrote works depicting the unhappy, bored, dissatisfied wife who feels she has finally found that missing spark. The fact that both authors were men, is testimony to their ability and sensitivity as writers to, vividly and accurately, portray women at their most complicated selves.In "Anna Karenina", Anna, (the heroine?), could have never forecasted her ultimate and tragic end. Even if she had been able to, she was eventually made delirious by her (love?) for Vronsky which rendered her incapable, if not unwilling, of altering her course. She begins almost from the outset of the affair with Vronsky to lose herself and her sense of identity, and along with it, the capacity to set her life's priorities. The questions that arise from the book are many: Are women easily misled into thinking, or rather, imagining their unhappiness? Or did Anna make the mistake of quickly choosing to marry the wrong man, as a final, desperate attempt to fill some real or imagined void, as the first stage in a woman's never-ending search for fulfillment? (Anna's husband, by all means, is a remote, calculating man more concerned about the preservation of his political career and the maintaining of appearances, than in the impending end of his marriage). Was Anna more burdened and troubled by a personal guilt, or by her banishment from the community that had at one time adored her? These questions only touch the surface. One gets the sense that had divorce arrangements been made prior to Anna meeting Vronsky, the outcome would have been much different. But not nearly as interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Splendid Romantic Tradgedy
Review: This classic is regarded by many as one of the greatest novels written and it is one of the best I have read. The plot is primarily centered around the tragic adulterous relationship between the beautiful high-society socialite Anna Karenina and the wealthy, suave Vronsky. Anna, dissatisfied in a loveless marriage to Karenin, the older , stiff and formal career bureaucrat, falls for the advances of Vronsky and ultimately abandons her husband and child for him. In so doing, though, she violates the unwritten tenets of high-society and is refused entry into the social circles she once frequented. Running parallel to this drama is the love affair between Levin and Kitty, which, in its innocence and beauty, stands in stark contrast to the illicit imbroglio of Anna and Vronsky. Intertwined throughout are a cast of characters that give life to Tolstoy's portrait Russian high society and allows him to flesh out his views on everything from his own struggles with religious faith and the meaning of life, to the role and place peasants in Russian society. I think what I liked and appreciated most about this work is the way Tolstoy conveys emotions and feelings in his characters down to the smallest details. I was absolutely riveted by the way Tolstoy depicted Anna's state of mind, especially as it became quite clear that she was heading toward a psychological abyss and her grasp on reality became tenuous. Excellent and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: ....
Review: This might just be the best book ever written. I know it's the best I've ever read. The characters are so so incredibly well developed. They are ambiguous, complex, oftentimes ugly, and real. Anna Karenina is a wonderfully complete portrait of love, marriage, and morality with a little dash of art, theology, politics, farming, economics, philosophy, etc etc thrown in. I'm read the revised Constance Garnett revised translation and the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. The P/V is startlingly better.
Rating: 
Summary: Anna Karenina
Review: This is a rather daunting undertaking, but so worth it in the end. The book is incredibly long and detailed. But it is also engaging, heart-wrenching and realistic. The emotions, motivations, private heartache, and public reactions of his characters ring true to the reader. Anna Karenina broke my heart. I sobbed as I read it. The broken relationship between Anna and her son was more than I could bear at times. I had to take breaks while reading to quell the oppressing sadness with which this book filled me.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the effort!
Review: Though I'm admittedly a bit of a newcomer to classic literature, I thought Anna Karenina was probably the best novel I've ever read. In a nutshell, it just seemed so real. I couldn't say the novel was greatly inspirational or overly dramatic (because at points, it was truly a bit slow), but nonetheless it was still completely captivating. Most of all, it was the characters, for me, that made this book. Tolstoy seemed to craft them so adroitly that they seemed less like fabricated characters in a novel than like real people, exposed to their innermost core. When they spoke to themselves, their inner dialogues gave such a realistic voice to all of our most poigniant, our most trivial, and our most insane thoughts. Tolstoy truly understood human nature. It definitely took me a while to get through...but I'm glad I did.
Rating:
Summary: It's well worth your time
Review: There were moments when I thought I would never finish this novel. In fact, I must admit, there were moments that I was so tired of reading about elections, hunting and farming that I almost forgot about the Anna Karenina plot line! But, I must say, upon finishing this novel and with a backwards glance, I realize I read a wonderfully meaningful novel which not only presents three marriages (Anna's, Stepan's and Levin's) and their complexities, but also a historical commentary of the issues of Victorian time, Russia. Splendid and captivating, this novel presents to the reader a spring-board into introspection of the "meaning of life", love and loss, birth and death. Read this novel, you will not regret the time you spend in doing so.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to think about what love is
Review: The novel is about forbidden love. For a women this love becomes a "need to be loved" while for a man "searching for one worth it". In the end it turns out she cannot satisfy that need in a man and for him, his love turns into pity for her. It is tragic. I wanted to read this novel to understand Tolstoy's views on man and woman, in this particular case about the strongest human emotion, love. Of course why man is like that and women like this have a lot to do with God and attributes of God manifested in the virtual character of man and woman. I was not disappointed. It was interesting to realize in the example of this novel that a man when he is in love he becomes more feminine while a woman becomes more possessive and masculine. Seeing this intertwining in the particular case between Anna and Vronski was very interesting to me. There are more characters in this novel than War and Peace. But contrary to War and Peace, characters except the main ones (Anna, Vronski, Karenin, and of course Lenin) do not have detailed sketches. On the other hand Tolstoy goes on a tangent and starts detailing the characters of Lenin's hunting dogs! The psychological paintings, as always the case in Tolstoy, were superb. Especially worth mentioning is that Tolstoy in his style puts you right in to Anna's thoughts leading to her suicide. You can almost hear Devil whispering in to her mind. She starts seeing things around herself distorted and unlovable. I could not help but remember the verses in Qur'an where Man and Woman (in the character of Adam and Eve) and Satan in the presence of God have this quarrel. In the end when things settle God decrees Man and Woman to take Earth as their abode and Satan banished from God's sight and on the heels of Man searching an opportunity to lower him as well in the sight of his Lord and prove his point that he, Satan, alone is better and more worthy of God's praise than Man. God decrees, "Get down, both of you together, some of you as enemy to each other..." (Qur'an 20:115-124). I must say these timeless mythological truths are no less relevant to us than your evening news at 6:30 on Channel 8. I am not sure if Tolstoy intended this or not in the first place, nevertheless Tolstoy does not do a very good job to develop Lenin's spiritual journey more and perhaps make it an alternative to what Anna and Vronski tried to find in each other. Lenin finds God after he gets married but his finding does not develop into a longing or love for God in the novel. That is why unfortunately the thought process in Levin's case leading to "acceptance of the existence of a deity" reads pretty dry and mechanistic. I have read the Everyman's Library translation of it. Apparently two missionaries who met Tolstoy and get acquainted with him during his lifetime did the translation. Overall it is a novel worth reading and/or having, if you want to think about what love is.
Rating:
Summary: Good love and bad love
Review: This is a splendid novel about the intertwined lives of a group of noble Russians by the middle XIXth century, most of them related to each other. It could also have been titled "Konstantin Levin", since this character is as important as Anna. Levin is the best rounded of all the characters, and in fact he is the center of the tale. His life, torments and thoughts are the central thread of the narration, which has a lot of cholateral stories: the Anna-Alexei Karenin-Vronsky triangle; Anna's husband drama; the fatal and sad love story between Anna and Vronsky; and the life of Stepan Oblonsky, Anna's brother (the most amusing one)and his wife Kitty, the sister of Dolly. Without exaggeration, each character is a fully developed human being, flesh and blood. Tolstoy manages to probe deep inside everyone's soul. There are no stereotypes, but you could depict each one. Oblonsky is a merry, good-natured but irresponsible and frivolous man. Vronsky is kind of a pervert but ultimately a good guy in need of some moral education. Anna is a hypersensitive woman, but tormented, selfish and hungry for passion. And Levin, well, Levin is a profoundly sensitive man, tormented not by the hunger for passion but by metaphysical questions, eager to find the good life. His long walks through his big estate, his work with the peasants and his musings on life are some of the most beautiful passages in this beautiful novel. I won't spoil anything, just read it and find a great tale of good love and bad love and how it all turns out. It is one of the peaks of world literature, along with some other works by Tolstoy, like "War and Peace" and "Hadji Murad".
Rating:
Summary: Levin's story
Review: This is one of the greatest books ever written and one of Tolstoi's last, written after his other major works. It clearly shows Tolstoi's state of mind in the latter part of his life as he became increasingly spiritual and more of a believer. At the end of his life, he renounced all his works. Although the story was described by some as 'the greatest love story ever written', it is not a glorification of unfettered love, and might even be seen as a cautionary tale. Anna falls in love with an army officer and leaves her well-respected (but square) husband, a scandalous move at that time in Russian high society. She is rejected by her entourage, becomes increasingly bitter and suspicious, and finally ends her own life in despair. Meanwhile another protagonist, a man named Levin, tries to lead a simple life in the country and gradually discovers happiness as he embraces his faith in God. It is said Levin's story resembles Tolstoi's own life.
Rating:
Summary: Who says Anna Karenina is a tragedy?
Review: While reading Anna Karenina you may wonder why two stories that are so loosely connected to each other, are running parellely in one novel. It is only towards the end of the book that you realise that these are not two separate stories at all. It is only because Tolstoy has juxtaposed these two apparently unrelated stories, that you can feel and exprience the 19th century Russian society, the very human search for happiness common to all the characters in the novel and the different meanings the characters manage to find out of their lives and surroundings. The stories are set in the background of Russian high society. Anna, married to one man, falls in love with another and soon finds married life a burden. As she decides to lose the shackles of marriage, she finds out that happiness is going to elude her either way. The second lead in the novel is Levin, a character very close to Tolstoy himself; whose story is about the everyday ups and downs of life and search for the meaning of life and the divine. Both the central characters, as well as the characters of Anna's husband, lover, brother and sister-in-law are detailed out so well by Tolstoy, that the reader starts thinking of them and feeling for them as real people with real reactions to the twisted situations of life. It is said that 'Anna Karenina' is one of the greatest stories of all times. I agree, and I believe its greatness lies in Tolstoy's detailing of characters and his knack to read the minds of his characters so effortlessly. Who says Anna Karenina is a tragedy? It is a story about discovery of life. And the discovery is not the least tragic. It is ironical, puzzling and at times, dramatic. Yet it is the celebration of human existence and aspirations; complete with all its failings.
|
