Anna Karenina

Rating:
Summary: Six Reasons to Buy and Read It:
Review: 1--Because you have read, understood and enjoyed Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary

2--Because you have patience and appreciate Tolstoys elegant, long-winded, moralistic, religious, deeply aristocratically Russian viewpoints (I do)

3--Because you are interested in the historical shift from serfdom and reliance upon farming in rural Russia to early industrialization (Levin is a wonderful character)

4--Because you would like to envision the beautiful Russian countryside filled with wheat ready to harvest and great hunting

5--Because you find it fascinating to live like a Prince and jet set around Europe while having an illicit affair

6--Because you are interested in why a woman would feel compelled to destroy everything she has, including her family, for a man

For a better taste of Tolstoy read War and Peace.

Rating:
Summary: Superb 19th-century literature.....
Review: Didactic, comprehensive, tragic, and challenging, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is immutably powerful 150 years after it's original telling. A searing juxtaposition of Constantine Levin, a confused, cautious, and questioning man and the impulsive, emotive Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's masterpiece gives reason to long reflect on the net results of adultery. Levin, a man of simple tastes and patient plodding, ultimately achieves love, family, and inner-peace while the cosmopolitan Anna, in her haste for self-gratification, throws it all away.

Amidst the often supercilious affectations of Russian nobility in Petersburg and Moscow, Tolstoy's refutation of the timeless notion of "greener pastures" plays out with striking effect. Of course, the impact of any 19th-century literature is directly proportional to one's predilections. However, Anna Karenina will engross, may even occasionally bore, but will never be less than a lesson well taught for those of the mind for reflection.