Anna Karenina

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.

'..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%

I just finished this book as part of a summer read-together with friends via zoom. We broke the story up into five Zoom chats based on the parts of the book, and it was a great way to work our way through the story. This book has a lot of things to discuss, and fostered great conversations and insights. From my perspective, I'm so glad I read it. It is a story rich in detail and depth, with characters that I enjoyed reading about, even if I didn't always like them very much. This is a book that I will hold on to to read again sometime in the future. There is so much that I likely missed the first time through. For anyone who feels that this book isn't accessible to them, please give it a shot. I read the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and the writing is so good. The fact that the writing is a translation makes it even more impressive. Be prepared to like this more than you thought you might, and to need to take reading it a little slower than normal. It's a great book.

3.5 stars rounded up. This book was alternately beautiful but frustrating, interesting but boring, uplifting but depressing. This is my first attempt at Russian literature and it was honestly quite a struggle - and I've already heard that this is one of the easier titles to start off with! What I really liked about it is how short the chapters are.

It was so difficult to root for Anna throughout this book. From start to end, I couldn't wrap my mind around why she was even into Vronsky to begin with. I think we probably didn't see enough of her usual peaceful life with her husband before Vronsky was introduced. The first moment we see her with her husband, Anna has already been shaken by Vronsky so she's already viewing her husband in “a new light” - we don't really see how she viewed her husband before. And honestly, Karenin didn't behave shabbily throughout this book. He's probably boring and all, sure, but he wasn't abusive or negligent imo. Anna's problems with him seems like it could have been at least talked out and improved upon. Since some part of the narrative was from his perspective, we could see that a lot of the things that Anna blamed him for (coldness, only caring about his/their public image above everything) were actually misunderstandings. He really did seem to love Anna.

In contrast, I had always thought Vronsky felt shady from the beginning. The effect was probably accomplished because Tolstoy decided to introduce him as Kitty's suitor and to have his snap decision to dump Kitty and go for Anna be something that almost ruined Kitty's life (and perhaps almost killed her too). That in itself was already shady af. To be fair, he wasn't just your usual rake - he too seemed to love Anna but I felt like his was a much more self-centered love than Karenin's was. He decides to pursue Anna simply because he felt like she wanted it, without any thought for what consequences it had for her. This came to fruition in the second half of the book when indeed their elopement and affair has far, far worse repercussions for Anna than it does for Vronsky but he just - doesn't care. He only gets annoyed by how much Anna is cramping his style and inhibiting his “male independence”. In Part 4 Ch 23: “[Vronsky] simply could not understand how, at this moment of their reunion, she could think about her son, about divorce. Was it not all the same?” He clearly doesn't care about what's important to Anna, only about what he thinks should be important to her.

Levin was quite a sympathetic character throughout (not surprising that I read he's meant to be Tolstoy's stand-in). I was definitely more invested in his romance with Kitty than I was with Vronsky and Anna. Levin also seemed to be Tolstoy's vehicle for laying out all his thoughts about Russian politics and society and all these big questions about religion and beliefs. I gotta admit that some of those chapters went off in such a huge tangent that I kinda just zoned out and skimmed through. I can't believe that the novel ended not with how characters dealt with Anna's suicide, but with Levin resolving his crisis of faith - like it just felt like totally out of the blue somehow. I also really loved the chapters where Levin thinks about his baby with Kitty. Part 7 Ch 15: “... there was a new tormenting fear. [...] the fear lest this helpless being should suffer was so strong, that because of it he scarcely noticed the strange feeling of senseless joy and even pride he had experienced when the baby sneezed.” I related to this so hard as a new parent!

Overall, there were so many parts in this book that I skimmed because I was bored to tears, but also so many passages that I felt unusually seen by (mostly to do with Levin and Kitty's new family), so it's really hard for me to put a rating to this. There were points where I felt like DNFing, but also passages that really shook me with how relatable it was. I'm not sure if I'd try more of Russian lit, but I'm glad I did this one.

Particularly when it comes to English speakers, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are categorised within the typical binary of Dostoevsky as the psychologist, and Tolstoy as the world-builder. But I don't think this is accurate. Tolstoy's portrayal of Anna is so harrowingly on point - I cannot think of a male author who conveys femininity with such startling accuracy.
It is always difficult to talk about a book that has such a powerful effect on you. I become so acutely aware of the inadequacy of my own vocabulary to even begin to discuss the different parts that had an effect on me.

What is this tendency to treat works of classical literature with this sort of reverence, as if they are untouchable, or beyond criticism?
This also exists alongside a willingness to attribute a profundity to it, that sometimes is quite simply not just there.
Anna Karenina - even as a physical book - is a tower of literature. And yet, there is something so pitiful about its universe - how almost pathetically human its characters are. As the story of Levin is autobiographical for Tolstoy, by extension, how pathetic Tolstoy is.
And this is truly what makes Russian literature so unique. There is none of this attempt to attribute nobility to flaws - you see them, in all of their squalor - with no redemption, with the characters just falling back into the same self-destructive habits, the same agony of inertia.


Anna Karenina suffers the same fate that every piece of Russian literature that ever is translated into another language suffers - it far too often, and unforgivably misinterpreted.
I'm not going to lecture too long about how a lot of meaning is lost in translation, because I think people who tend to do that sound wanky. I'll just give a brief example - many people are familiar with the famous first opening words of Anna - the second sentence of the novel: “Everything was in confusion in the Oblonsky's home.” In Russian text, the word ‘dom' is repeated 8 times in 6 sentences. This solemn reptition ‘dom, dom, dom, dom' tolling, as it does, for doomed family life, is one such way.

The first cardinal misinterpretations is that of Karenina's moral issue. The story is not about oppressive social standards that drive a woman who engages in a forbidden romance to suicide. Nor is the “moral” that Anna, having commited adultery, Anna must “pay” for this (which is the moral of the French piece of trite that goes by the name of ‘Madame Bovary'). Nor are we, as the reader, even expected to sympathise with Anna.

First, regarding the point about how the story is misinterpreted as being about how a parochial, outdated system of social norms stifled and suffocated Anna and Vronsky's passionate love affair. Think of the word of Darya (Kitty's sister), in response to the discussion of Anna's potential divorce: “Anything but divorce! She will be lost!”
I cannot even initiate my analysis of why this is such an incorrect way to interpret the text without fulling getting my feelings about how offended this interpretation makes me off my chest [yes, I'm allowed to be self-indulgent about my own sensibilities, this is my own blog]. Do you really think that Tolstoy is so simple minded that this story is merely a social critique? How could anybody possibly, possibly believe that Russians are so pitifully simplistically minded? In the Russian society that Anna inhabits, affairs were commonplace and known about - and therefore, often the novel is interpreted as exposing the hypocrisy of how this stratified society allows affairs, yet forbids “serious love affairs”. Nothing could be a more perverse interpretation of this text. The conventions of society are temporal - as all conventions are - and have very little to do with the eternal demands of morality which Tolstoy was so paralyzed by.
There's a reason why in a book that is nearly 1,000 pages long, almost no attention is paid to what Anna's social circle is saying.
To interpret Anna and Vronky's pathetic “love affair” (which is being far too generous to either of these selfish hedonists) as two people who were “prevented” from being together not only demonstrates (i) a really awful reading comprehension skill but (ii) a toleration for harmful hedonism which is reminiscent of the nihilism which ironically, Tolstoy himself so detested and feared.

Instead, the moral point that Tolstoy makes is that: when love becomes egotistic, such a love is carnal. Love that is carnal destroys, rather than creates.
The direct juxtaposition of the Lyovin-Kitty story and the Vronski-Anna story hammers this point down.
Lyovin's marriage to Kitty (which is Tolstoy's autobiographical account of his own marriage) is based on a metaphysical concept of love, that includes a willingness of self-sacrifice. Anna's love is so excessively carnal that the egotism it generates borders on the pathological.
Lyovin's love is austere, unromantic, and painfully Christian. The riches of sensual nature are still there, but harmonious in the atmosphere of tenderness, truth and responsibility.
Nothing could be a more harsh contrast than that of Anna, who although appears richly sensual, is entirely spiritually sterile.
Yet this is not to say that we are to take from this a


ANNA'S LAST DAY
The stream of consciousness employed by Tolstoy is noteworthy as a method of expression which is entirely Tolstoy's creation (although admittedly refined and improved later, by James Joyce). The narrative is an erratic record of Anna's mind switching from idea to image without any comment from Tolstoy: “Was that really me? Those red hands? Everything that seemed so wonderful and unattainable is now so worthless, and what I had then is out of my reach forever! How awful that paint smells. Why is it that they are always painting buildings? Dressmaker.” This contrast between the incidental (specific) and the dramatic (general) give the text an almost anxiety inducing quality. To read Anna switch effortlessly from recognising a passer-by, to instantly thinking about how she will never ever again see her son - this instant juxtaposition is utterly terrifying.

Counting this as my Russia book around the world.

This was looooong, and it sure felt long. I really enjoyed it in the end, and found Katya, her sister, and Lenin to be my most preferred characters. The POV changes so often I found it hard to stay interested, but overall I can appreciate the book for what it is and I cared about some of the characters.

What really made me like this book was all the political discussions about class and gender and the frequency in those discussions happened. Also..the scene with Katya and Lenin's brother? So good. Such a good beautiful scene in which Katya showed her strength in such a touching way.

It was hard to rate this.

On one hand, it's a literary masterpiece. It's intricate and sprawling. It has so many well-developed themes — love, marriage, monogamy, class, religion, sexism... just to name a few — and it's a fascinating glimpse into Russian life prior to the revolution.

On the other, every character is an idiot. It's nihilistic to the point of making at least one person — no spoilers — jump under a train. My husband asked me to stop yelling about this book.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this. And I hated it.

Admittedly, I haven't read that much Russian literature before. I think I enjoyed the first part of the story more, and Anna's parts more than the Levin parts. Some of the Levin parts were a bit too slow going to the point that I got frustrated.
Okay, so the characters didn't appear that sympathetic at times, particularly Anna, but the book does give an insight into the Russian society of the time and in particular the hypocritical way Anna is treated - forced not only to live in as kind of semi-married stasis but also to be treated like a social pariah for loving Vronsky (who it seems is unaffected socially by the match).
Not an easy read and it's taken me months to finish it, but I'm glad I read it.

idk i kinda came into this book looking for like a high society muscovite forbidden romance or whatever but it is quite literally just kostya lenin talking about farming and hunting and fantasising about the country & peasant life with kitty, like we got more of kostya & kitty's love story lol and not anna karenina's & vronsky's... the title is super misleading but anyway, it's still a good read, and i had fun, but meh

I heard it called the world's best known soap opera. I heard it called the world's greatest novel.

It's the world's greatest novel.

It's a brilliant intertwining of characters, characters who are as fully human as you can ever get on the page. There is Dolly Oblonsky, a matronly wife who has lost her husband's affections and doesn't know why and doesn't know what to do. There's her husband, Stiva Oblonsky, the womanizing yet charming fellow who can't stop flirting with women and can't manage money. There is Kitty Alexandrovna, the woman at the height of her beauty who is intrigued with the easily-bored Count Alexei Vronsky. There is Konstantin Levin, a country farmer, confused about life, estranged from religion, and deeply taken with the young Kitty. There is Alexei Karenin, the dutiful husband who seeks guidance about what is right. And there is Anna Karenina herself, the title character, who is swept up in a mad romance with Count Vronsky, and has to deal with the consequences, a situation where no move is a happy one for herself or for anyone else.

I was especially taken with Konstantin Levin and his anguished search for truth and happiness, in his work relations with others, in the choosing of his wife, in his philosophy of life. I will never forget the final paragraph of this book, a paragraph that deeply resonates with me, lines from Levin as he finally is able to put together everything he has learned into a wonderful personal philosophy of life:

“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own fright and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

I can see that I am going to be pushing everyone I meet to read this book. I apologize in advance. It's, after all, over eight hundred pages. But it's worth it. It's definitely worth it.

Hallelujah! I'm finished. Finally.

Glad I stuck it out and finished but now I know I am not a Tolstoy fan. Tolstoy's writing wanders all over the place with tangents. I admit there were a number of times I zoned out but kept going. It was like a soap opera. I still knew what was going on even if I missed an episode. And as if the all the tangents weren't enough, at one point, Tolstoy thought it was a brilliant idea to hear/read the dog's thoughts. Yes, the dog.

Thank god for Levin and Kitty - at least when she wasn't being a whiny, lovesick girl and he wasn't yapping about farming with the peasants. Without them I would have wanted to throw the whole book under the train with Anna.

It is brilliant... but I had forgotten that Tolstoy was very Christian.
So - Anna goes mad and accidentally kills herself, but Levin gets his religion on, so all if well.
This is really not a love story between Anna and Vronsky. Levin is the MC here. But - I suppose if people were aware of it, a lot of people wouldn't read this book :-D

BTW, I hate AnnaI found her extremely selfish, stupid, mean, entitled bitch. Even her death... sigh Stupid bitch!
I feel so bad for Seryozha. I can't imagine how Anna Alexeyich's life is going to be, being brought up by Karenin, who hated both her parents. I can imagine how Seryozha hates his little sister who is a symbol of what took his mother away from him. I wish Anna had taken Seryozha and run away when she wanted to. Never mind Karenin's letter and wishes. Obviously she didn't really care about what he thought.
I was expecting Anna to be more judged, but people weren't really that nasty to her. One incident, which she should have expected to happen. I mean, how would she not understand people see her as the marriage breaker, when she is the only one who was unfaithful to her spouse? Vronsky was unmarried, Karenin never cheated on anyone.
And Vronsky really loved her and tried to do what was best for her. She was just so f-ing wound up with herself that she didn't even hear him. And, no, I don't accept the way the society and her husband treated her as any excuse. She refused to divorce him, and then she started whining because he changed his mind. After all, she lost her son when she chose Vronsky... even when Karenin had seen to that she could have a respectable life as a wife and mother, AND all the love and sex with Vronsky. I can only assume she was sick (like bipolar or something), and that, I suppose, is excuse enough. But I still don't like her.

I also love the description of Levin and the birth of his son :-D

I was a bit surprised by all the politics going on in the book. I didn't know about that.

A laborious, thoroughly-explained explanation of what it means to be Russian & how that manifests in the lives of the well-off and the not-so-well. I give it three stars, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. In fact, I very much did. Although I would've preferred for it to be titled something else, or at least for the title character to have more of something to do with it, you realise in the last three-quarters that everything had to do with her. It's not necessarily a book about anything except the sheer magnitude of human energy & that influence on others. The explanations might drag onward into small history lessons, but as someone who likes them, I found the majority of them to be interesting ( although, of course, there were many that weren't. ) Three stars means that I probably won't be giving this a re-read, now that I've finally finished it, but it's something that I will recall & be able to discuss thoroughly. In my opinion, the prose reads a bit like a discussion; whilst things are not left “open-ended”, there are many places where you could easily drift off into conversation with whomever is reading it with you, much like the characters & the narrators drift off. I think Tolstoy does a very good job in reflecting just how stream-of-consciousness human beings are, and how all of us have moments of intense self-introspection. Realistic, lengthy, and arduous.