Anna Karenina
Ratings383
Average rating4
Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as “flawless,” Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.
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I have never hated any character as much as I hated Anna. I have never wanted to strangle a character as much as I wanted to strangle everyone in this novel. This is 800 pages of Tolstoy's religious, political, agricultural, and philosophical opinions, interspersed throughout painful interactions, unlikeable inner monologues, a confusing timeline, and gaping plot holes/inconsistencies. I wanted to give this book more stars because it's extremely well-written and, for the most part, I greatly enjoyed the first 400-or-so pages. It's all downhill after that, unfortunately, and it really bumped down my rating.
Finally finished!! This book was great at the beginning but the end just lost me. Maybe it's because I dragged it out over 6 months, eh?
'..a 2007 poll of 125 contemporary authors in Time, which declared that Anna Karenina is the “greatest book ever written.”‘
Still just a romance. Ana loves Bob. Bob loves Maria. Maria loves Pedro. Pedro loves Ana. This is the crux of the book. If this is interesting to you, go right ahead and read it.
4:07/35:26 12%
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