Anna Karenina

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.