Anna Karenina

I saw the movie and thought I would listen to the book. Very enjoyable as an audiobook although very long so it was great for painting my walls. The narrator does a fantastic job with the emotions of the characters. A very good classic.

Tolstoy’s greatest novel, what some deem the greatest novel ever written, seems to ‘proceed as plotlessly and accidentally as life itself’ (E. B. Greenwood, Introduction to Anna Karenina, p. xii). Tolstoy contrasts two people of different character and temperament both of whom we squirm, flinch and weep in response to their actions. Anna lives for her own needs, passions and freedom. Levin lives for the good of others and his soul. In this way Anna and her affair with Vronsky depicts so outstandingly what modern philosophers call expressive individualism, where being true to our authentic self by expressing our deepest desires and acting on them is heroic. The Tolstoy critic Andrew Kaufman says in an interview that the 1860s were a time of great transition in Russia whereby the more traditional value system was being replaced by a new value systems. Tolstoy watched his friends and family members were getting divorced at alarming numbers. And this concerned him because in his view, the family is one of the key social units. And when families fall apart, he believed societies begin to fall apart. This is a central theme in Anna Karenina. Tolstoy heard people saying, "maybe marriage isn't the be all and end all of life. Maybe even if you do get married, not having kids might lead to a greater happiness." And, and of course, this is something that's very much echoed in today's world. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy shows that the problem with these arguments is that they come from a false set of assumptions: This idea that more freedom means more fulfillment, that the gratification of one's personal desires, leads to more happiness. Tolstoy came to the opposite conclusion; that in many cases, less freedom can lead to a more abiding happiness because it forces us to make choices to make hard choices, and to commit to those choices with the fullness of our being. And family life is the ultimate embodiment of making those kinds of choices, of limiting our freedom for the sake of love. And so it is the characters who embrace the duties, the pain, the vulnerability of family life—of fatherhood, motherhood, being a son, being a daughter—those are often the characters who in the end, end up achieving the deepest kind of fulfillment.Kaufman gives an example from Tolstoy's own life. While writing War and Peace, he used a very interesting metaphor to describe what he was like before he got married, and what he's like now. It was the metaphor of an apple tree that he described himself as. An apple tree, that once sprouted in all different directions. But 'now, that it’s trimmed, tied, and supported, its trunk and roots can grow without hindrance.' It's a very powerful image. At the heart of it is this idea that sometimes limits are what allow us to grow more fully. And limits are actually what allow us to realise our fullest human potential.So according to Tolstoy a life like Anna's, which looks so romantic and promising, usually ends in tragedy. The reversal of fortunes is shown when Anna and Kitty are contrasted by Dolly (Kitty's sister): “‘How happily it turned out for Kitty that Anna came,’ said Dolly, ‘and how unhappily for her! The exact reverse,’ she added, struck by her thought. ‘Then Anna was so happy and Kitty considered herself miserable. Now it’s the exact reverse.’” (p. 551)Anna becomes a slave to her love/lust for Vronsky and finds herself trapped without access to her son, with excessively jealous of Vronksy, and unable to live without his enmeshed love.Tolstoy contrasts Anna's persist of freedom to desire what she wants to Levin's. Upon his engagement to Kitty, Levin's brother and friends question him about the loss of freedom he will experience when he is married. Levin replies, “‘What is the good of freedom? Happiness consists only in loving and desiring: in wishing her wishes and in thinking her thoughts, which means having no freedom whatever; that is happiness!’” (p. 442). Levin’s desire is not possessive self serving eros (like Anna’s), but generous other-centred agape. The result is that while Levin’s life is not easy, although there is doubt and jealousy and fear and conflict, there nevertheless is true freedom, fulfilment and happiness. He is not enslaved but a servant of love and goodness. I found the book long and tedious at points but I suppose that is because Tolstoy so wants us to “love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations”. He packs in so much of life into the 806 pages, not just in the grand moments but also in the ordinary ones. The result is that you end up on a journey through 19th century Russia, a place and time I have now lived vicariously through. But Tolstoy also takes you on a journey to the very heart of human experience. The plot changes don’t come quickly. Instead Tolstoy spends significant time taking you into the mind and heart of all these different kinds of characters: nobels and peasants, philosophers and farmers, men and women, the promiscuous and duty-bound. Tolstoy draws you in to empathise with all these as you realise you share their same hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, temptations and regrets. The conversions of Karenin, Anna and Levin all demand attention. I am not sure Tolstoy ever really grasps the nature of the gospel of grace. He comes close at points but never really gets there. The closest we get is Karenin’s forgiveness of Anna, Anna’s cry for forgiveness at her death, and Levin’s humble recognition of the gift and goodness of life.I think this novel is like the book of Ecclesiastes: it teaches us about life under the sun and concludes that the meaning of life is “to live for God, to the soul” (p. 785). or as Solomon says, "A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?" (Eccl 2:24–25)Yes this is the meaning of life, but what does that look like? And how is atonement possible when we fail. Tolstoy raises this question superbly, hints at an answer, but in many ways it's still a mystery. For a clear answer we must turn to the Gospels or perhaps to the novels of Dostoevsky who perhaps understood better the gospel of grace.

I read this many, many years ago and always wanted to re-visit it. Suspecting there were too many other books ahead on my list I chose to download the audio version from my library. Upon first reading I was fascinated by the intricacies of social life as described by Tolstoy. This time around what impressed me was the timelessness of his writing. The characters seem as real as those in any modern novel. The social conventions and political discussions were still interesting but it was the characters lives that remained front and center this time around.

One of the best things about being a Russian aristocrat has got to be that you can just stop your carriage alongside any field and yell at a random peasant and they will drop whatever dumb peasant job they’re doing and run off to do whatever thing you yell at them to do. “You there! You! Run ahead to the manor and inform the Count’s groom that I wish him to make ready the stables.”“Riiiight. And just who the hell are you?”But they never say that! They just run ahead to make sure the stables are ready. Fantastic.Reading Anna Karenina was part of my reinvigorated program to grab something on my shelf that I’d been meaning to read and just read the bastard, fifty pages a day until it’s done. It's sublime.This is the mastery of Tolstoy: In a thousand pages of interpersonal failures, slights, feuds, marriages, love affairs, elections, engagements, spa treatments, farming, and philosophical banter, with every human virtue and vice on display, he never once tips his hand and telegraphs what we are supposed to think about a character. They are fully-realized human figures, and all you can do is experience and feel with them. If you’re going to judge them for good or ill, you do it on your own. He doesn’t do any of that for you.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So begins this novel, with one of it’s most famous lines, but only one of many in which the author makes broad and though-provoking statements about human nature. Anna Karenina is a study of relationships, love, and adultery - especially Anna’s passionate affair with Count Vronsky. This simple description of the plot, however, hides the truly staggering depth of the novel. Along with Vronsky and Anna’s relationship, the many other romantic relationships presented raise questions about the nature of love; about the way society views men and women differently for their romantic choices; and about what it means to be happy.The writing in this book was a pleasure to read, one of those books were you savor the sentences. The author is often funny, dry, or witty in his insights into human nature. The characters are all amazingly well developed, with both good and bad qualities and believable motivations. Even when characters don’t seem very sympathetic at first, Tolstoy does an incredibly job pulling you into each character’s world view and making you feel for them. The relationships are as complex as the characters and could be difficult to follow. Fortunately, Tolstoy introduces characters clearly and slowly so his readers can keep up. My only complaint would be that he often uses full names, titles, and Russian nicknames for characters, which does make it harder to keep track of who is who.One complaint you’ll often hear about this novel, is that Tolstoy enjoys his digressions. There are hunting expeditions, local elections, and so many character’s philosophical musings, none of which advance the romantic plots that pulled me in. Some of these didn’t bother me, since I enjoyed the book for the author’s study of human nature. Still, I was going to give this novel four stars for the philosophical discussions of things that interest me less than love and relationships, such as the Russian economy. But when I sat down to write the description, I realized that this was a novel so good, I didn’t feel I could do it justice in my description. Anna’s bravery and passion for life captured my heart, as she has the hearts of so many others. Read this one for the characters, the commentary on life, but mostly for the experience of meeting Anna because no one but Tolstoy can really do her justice.

(Original Review, 1981-02-24)If you're not familiar with the The Orthodox Church's intricacies, don't bother reading the novel. It might also to understand the social context in which Anna Karenina is set, which Tolstoy doesn't explain because he was writing for fellow members of the Orthodox Church who would have understood the particular nuances. For Russian society at the time, an immoral act was one that offended all Creation and therefore God himself - it is quite common for Russian priests even now to admonish those confessing to serious sins by telling them that they are 'spitting in Christ's face'. Yet there are subtleties to Anna's predicament that are probably lost on Westerners: unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which forbids divorce for any reason, the Orthodox Church permits this where a marriage has irrevocably broken down, on the basis that it was never based on true love in the first place and thus null and void. So in the novel it is only Karenin's pride (which for the Orthodox is the greatest sin of all) that stands in the way of dissolving his tragically unhappy marriage. Anna's action challenges the hypocrisy of society and she brings down the anger of the hypocrites upon herself because she has the barefaced cheek to expect people to behave towards her as they did before her "fall" from grace. Her "friends", such as the poisonous Princess Betsy, desert her because she is an uncomfortable reminder of their own failings.In fact, I'd go a little further and suggest that the absence of clearly defined mores has led to the proliferation of petty judgementalism infiltrating every aspect of life. It's like Jacques Lacan said about Dostoyevsky's famous quote, ('If God is dead, everything is permitted'), accurately turning it around to say "If God is dead, nothing is permitted." And so we all throw the first stone at one another...The great Victorian judge and political philosopher James Fitzjames Stephen said that the main deterrent to crime is not the law, but public opinion. He was right. One of the reasons Arab countries have such a low crime rate is that a thief would be shunned by his family and wider community. The most judgmental people I know are self-described non-judgmentalists: they hate (straightforwardly) judgmental people, i.e. people with personalities, who don't have to cling on to PC BS in order to create a persona for themselves.PS. Something I didn't know until recently was that Vronsky, like Levin, was based on Tolstoy's own experiences. He represented Tolstoy's own shallow, artificial lifestyle that he gave up and was ashamed of. Vronsky is mature, attractive and amoral. He sees nothing wrong with pursuing a married woman because society's hypocrisy allows for that, but he gets in deeper than he intended. Not the deepest of characters, but Vronsky's casting in this film was absolutely ridiculous.

Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density.

Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at a novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels,- of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence. It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy in life's many ephemeral pleasures, and a profusion of comic relief.

A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs entirely to the woman whose name it bears, whose portrait is one of the truest ever made by a writer.

Review: Anna is NOT a strong woman in my opinion. She is weak and dependant on the male character's love and opinion of her.

Kitty is the real strong woman of this novel. She gets over Vronsky, even able to meet him cordially at the end of the book, and although she too relies on Levin a bit too heavily at certain points, she lets him live his own life too - unlike Anna with Vronsky.

It's taken me just over 4 months (probably longer aas I started it in December) to finish this novel & am relieved it's finally completed. Although there were a few moments of brilliance, I won't be rushing to read it again.

First, I started this book 4ish years ago. I would read a chunk of it, than stop for awhile, and pick it up a few months later. Its not an easy read - mostly because it seems like the names keep changing. I understand, what a person in Russia is called is dependent on the relationship, but its difficult. It took me awhile to figure it out. It also helped that the last third of the book had less characters. It would have helped to have a list of full names for the characters. Its a difficult book, but the pay off is immense if you can stick with it.This next part has spoilers, so, read at your own risk.Anne Karenina isn't necessarily about Anna - although the other characters revolve around her. This is a story about relationships. Good relationships, bad relationships and how society views relationships depending on gender. Anna is bored wife of a bureaucrat. Her husband provides for her, and lets her do her own thing, he doesn't make her a part of his life, basically ignoring her until he needs her presence. Anna is intelligent, beautiful, and make a whole room light up when she walks in. When she meets a military man named Vronsky, her whole world is turned upside down. He is a cad, leading young women on, and than dropping them as soon as he looses interest. But, Anna seduces him - even after she denies him, he continue to pursue and eventually Anna gives in. Her husband tries to make it work, but the allure of Vronsky calls - Anna eventually leaves him for Vronsky. But, Anna is still not free. Until she is granted a divorce, she is only a mistress and is ostracized from society, living a lonelier life than before. Eventually, this gets to her and she commits suicide by throwing herself before a train.The next couple is Dotty and Oblansky. Oblansky is Anna's brother, and like to spend money, dote on ballerina's, and gamble. Dotty holds the family together - making sure that there is money for the most basic of upper-class necessities. She considers divorcee him a number of times throughout the book, but it would leave her in a similar state as Anna, even though she would be in the right of the law.The last couple is Kitty and Levin. Kitty is Dotty's sister, and she was the young girl Vronsky led on right before Anna. Kitty ends up sick from the whole experience, but ultimately recovers when Levin ultimately proposes to her. They are the perfect couple, in love, and able to talk through problems, understanding each other's personalities, the good and the bad. These three couples form the core of what Anna Karenina is about. There is also a large parts of the book devoted to Levin's thoughts about peasantry, land management, pointlessness of the upper-class life in Moscow, and belief in God. I'm still pondering what this adds to the book, because it seems not to add anything, and at times, its overwritten and tends to ramble. I do think Levin is based off of Tolstoy and his life, but large chunks of this could have been removed to no effect of the rest.

I would consider War and Peace the greater novel, but gosh, isn't this a fantastic piece of work? What author so successfully places us inside the head of each of its characters, moving them forward with an unrelenting pace while also tying them so closely to the fortunes of their nation? Wondrous.

I tried. I have read 1/3 of the book, thr writing is amazing. But the story is dull. 3 relationships crash and burn from adultery or failure to communicate. Maybe if I read this back in high school I would think differently. But in 2017, after reading so many books with the same story line. After all the hype over this book, I expected more.

Just because you can take 800 pages to say something about the human condition doesn't mean you should.I'd rather be reading Chekhov.

Not only was this a remarkable read, but the love/ hate relationship that I had with several of the characters was an interesting experience. Tolstoy developed his characters in a way that I have never experiences. All of the political hub bub was a bit heavier than I would of likes, but still, brilliant.

I found the main plot absolutely gripping, though I got a bit weary of Levin, the character who represents Tolstoy himself.

Tolstoy's War and Peace is one of my favorite books. Many of the reviews I have read rates Anna Karenina as a superior book. I could not disagree more. I very much appreciate Tolstoy's ability to create unique characters and to invite the reader into the minds and emotions of them. I found that I enjoyed the ups and downs of the multiple stories within the novel. However, I found that this novel did not truly have a plot. Through over 1100 pages, I never once remember thinking, "I can't wait to see what happens next!" The novel just plods along as a study of relationships. Another problem I had was that I had a hard time liking the main character of Anna Karenina. I didn't appreciate her actions, and struggled with the end of her story. Perhaps that was more of my life issues than her's, but either way, it soured the story for me.

One book, but in fact two stories: that of Anna, the wife of the very stable but boring Karenin; and that of Levin a man of great doubts and a powerfull wil. Both are very strongly in search for happyness, but in different directions. For Anna thist lies outside her cold marriage, but social pressure and the (inevitable?) evolution of the affair with Vronsky is driving her to insanity. Levin too is tempted by insanity, but he finds stability in marriage, and in the end also in faith. The story and the most important characters are wel develeppod, but occasionely Tolstoi looses himself in diverging stories, as in War and Peace. All in all, this is a really great novel, especcially because of the psychological development of Anna en Levin. The story is lively, there is less moralising in it.

Joy's Review: I just loved the flow of the first half of this classic when the narrative moved seamlessly between characters and locations. After that, things often felt disjointed to me and I thought 100-150 pages shorter would have worked for me. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting a book I hadn't read since High School. All of the characters are so vivid and realistic; few are very likeable. I feel for Anna who had so few options in a society that so severely limited the options open to women and I often wanted to shake her. Most classics are that for a reason; if you've never read "Anna Karenina", pick it up!

It's hard to say anything original about a classic, but I would just say this is about lots of things besides romance, although that's in there. The major theme that interested me was the idea of self-centeredness and its destructive effects on relationships.

I give up. This book and I aren't meant to be friends. It's sitting at the top of my pile, mocking me. I can't pick it up. I can't finish it. Me and the Russians just don't mix.

Another that I don't have that much to say about, others have already said pretty much anything there is to say.Anna is an enjoyable read. It went a bit quicker than I anticipated given its length and age, but Tolstoy has written wonderful "real" characters, and while the nuances & laws may have changed somewhat over time, the experiences are still essentially the same. There's not really much plot, it's all about the people - the romances and heartbreaks, living life, contemplating life. I was slightly underwhelmed with the very end, I guess I was expecting something a bit more ...final, but after sleeping on it I'm a bit more content; it does make sense, given the nature of the entire book. It's good, easily recommended for those who like character-driven novels and/or Russian classics.

This is a wonderful new translation of Tolstoy?s great novel that should enthrall a new generation of readers. It is beautifully presented by Alma Classics, and includes an interesting preface and translators? note, informative notes to the text and useful extra material on Tolstoy?s life and works.It is entirely legitimate to ask ourselves why we should bother to read Anna Karenina. After all, it?s a novel written originally in Russian in the nineteenth century by an aristocrat about people falling in and out of love, when moral conventions and society?s strictures were different to what they are today, when divorce was rare and adultery could lead to social annihilation. What can it possiby have to say to us now?Well, a great deal, as a matter of fact. Anna Karenina is a novel that beguiles and intrigues. The world it depicts and dissects remains fascinating in itself. Its characters are among the most memorable ever created. And the targets and outward forms of social disapproval may be different now to what they were then, but they nevertheless exist. The world is still an awfully harsh place to those who step out of line or who cannot enter into prescribed ways of thinking and feeling.Anna Karenina and War and Peace are often described as very different novels, and that is true. However, they share fundamental themes. Both of them are about how it is we decide and make mistakes about whom and what we should love in life, to whom and to what we should give our loyalty, our belief, our faith. In War and Peace these themes are exposed amid momentous historical events; in Anna Karenina the scale is smaller, but history still intrudes.It may surprise those who read Anna Karenina for the first time just how little the eponymous heroine appears in the novel. Anna and Vronsky almost take second place to Kitty and Levin and Dolly and Stiva. All three of these stories are concerned with marriage and love: their formation, their dissolution, their glories and perils. Anna?s fate is tragic; Kitty?s romantic; Dolly?s pathetic. All are deeply touching.I have read Anna Karenina many times, yet I always fall in love with Anna on first sight, just as Vronsky and Kitty fall in love with her when they first see her. Anna is intelligent and charming and beautiful and wonderfully dressed and clearly fundamentally good. She has come to Moscow on a mission of mercy: she is here to comfort Dolly, whose unhappiness with husband Stiva?s faithlessness is understandably overwhelming. Anna eventually helps reconcile the two of them; she is all-conquering, often without meaning to be.One of the reasons that Anna Karenina is such a great novel, one that we can read over and over again, and see different things each time, is that its characters are intensely human ? so much so that they can feel more alive than we will ever be. They are as much prey to their emotions and circumstances as we are, yet we are given the inestimable privilege of access to their innermost thoughts by means of their inner monologue, their actions and what Tolstoy tells us about them (yes, like all great writers, Tolstoy is not afraid to tell as well as to show).For instance, in part 1, chapter 9, Levin, preoccupied and cheered by the possible significance of Kitty?s ?Au revoir?, takes part in this exchange with Oblonsky as they travel to lunch: ?You like turbot, don?t you?? [Oblonsky] said to Levin as they were arriving. ?What?? Levin repeated the question. ?Turbot? Oh yes, I?m awfully fond of turbot.?This amusing and seemingly insignifcant detail is charged with emotion: Levin is elated, and he has momentarily transferred his love for Kitty and his happiness at his future prospects to the contemplation of lunch. It shows us his delight, which has overspilled its boundaries; Levin?s optimism and pleasure in life cannot be contained.Anna Karenina is full of such important details. For example, in part 1, chapter 17, as the train carrying Anna pulls in to the station, just before we meet Anna for the first time, we are told of ?the luggage van with a yelping dog inside it.? This little fact accomplishes a great deal: it shows there are other lives with other dramas and other levels of suffering besides Anna?s; it makes us wonder about the poor dog and enter into its distress; it introduces a note of melancholy and foreboding right at the start of our journey with Anna. The next chapter ? the famously proleptic chapter when a man is killed by a train ? amplifies the tentative note of alarm introduced by the yelping dog.There are no villains in Anna Karenina: Anna?s husband is stiff and pompous, but he is not evil. Stiva Oblonsky is reckless, self-indulgent and a spendthrift, but with it tremendously loveable. Rather, people are more or less confused by themselves, by society, by the decisions they have to make, by their own hidden recessess and weaknesses. Appearance is often at odds with inner reality. At Kitty?s first ball, when she observes the unmistakable signs of Vronsky falling in love with Anna, she is crushed: ?But despite the fact that she looked like a butterfly that had just alighted on a blade of grass, ready at any moment to spread its rainbow wings and fly away, her heart was aching with terrible despair.?And immediately after all the beauty of the ball, chapter 24 opens with Levin thinking to himself: ?Yes, there?s something disgusting, repulsive about me.? The world of Anna Karenina is one of sharp contrasts of beauty and ugliness, pain and pleasure. Self-awareness is elusive: ?Without himself realizing it, Karenin now sought opportunities to have a third person with him at his meetings with his wife.?Later in the novel, the death of Frou-Frou and Vronsky?s guilt about it take on a wider meaning: he has upset the social balance, prefiguring Anna?s own death. And death haunts Anna Karenina: in part 5, chapter 20, the only chapter given a title in the whole novel is called Death. It is the certainty of death that propels Levin to extremes of thought and feeling, as he attempts to give meaning to a life he regards as absurd.Outcomes, future lives, can sometimes be decided by an instant?s passing. In part 6, chapter 6, Koznyshov and Varenka are walking in the woods, picking mushrooms, and everyone is certain he will propose to her. Yet, when he is on the verge of declaring himself, he hesitates, and Varenka fills the silence with a superfluous sentence that irritates him, and the moment passes.And listen to this about poor, sweet Dolly: ?At home, because of her worries about the children, she never had time to think. But now, on this four hour journey, all the thoughts previously held back suddenly came crowding into her head, and she thought over her whole life as she never had before, and from the most widely differing angles.?I have a great affection for Dolly. Despite her helplessness, her increasing disillusionment, she sees things that others do not see, and she feels Anna?s pain and is kind to her.Tolstoy does some daring things in Anna Karenina, many of which would be frowned upon nowadays by the guardians of literary orthodoxy. He takes us inside the minds of multiple characters, often within the same short chapter and only in passing. Not once, but twice, we enter the consciousness of a dog. Tolstoy the narrator steps outside the story to tell us things the characters cannot know. He indulges in seeming digressions of inordinate length: lengthy passages about farming methods, social reform, the life of peasants. There are episodes of hunting that take place over days of diegetic time. Tolstoy does all these things, not because he didn?t know any better, but because he is a great writer of enormous confidence, gifted with a controlling intellect unafraid to experiment or to make full use of technique. ?Forwarding the plot? is not his major concern; it is character that interests him, and hence life. His most celebrated feat is the stream of consciousness passage right at the end of the novel, when Anna begins her final, fateful journey. Anna?s mind has become a movie camera avant la lettre, registering the things she sees from her carriage window through a lens distorted by grief and depression.After Anna?s disappearance from the novel we are placed in the company of Koznyshov, a relatively minor character. This is a wonderfully daring and exhilarating change in perspective. Koznyshov meets Vronsky who, stricken with grief, has allowed his life to be swept up by the forces of history: he is on his way to fight for the pan-Slavic cause against the Turks. Yet Tolstoy shows how this particular historic cause is made up of drunkards and braggarts and supporters without a clue as to the true nature of war.One could go on and on about Anna Karenina. Instead of listening to me, I recommend that you read it for yourself in this marvellous new translation. You will love it as I do.

So i did like it but was not a book that blew me away. This was another story written for the rich of the times since they were the only ones who could read. However; i loved the build up of characters and truly got to know some of them in a very deep way. Was also interesting to find out what Russia was like before communism set in. Tolstoy's writing is wonderful; but the story just wasn't one that gabbed me.

Beautifully written.

Truly one of the benchmarks against which any work of fiction may be measured. I got so much out of a second reading that I missed in the first pass...age and experience changes the book.

This book was not for me! I listened to the audio book and had to check it out multiple times in order to get through it. I even sped up the track to get through it faster. I didn't like any of the characters and I didn't enjoy any of the politics. I know some people love this book but, again, it wasn't for me. I pushed through it just because it is on the "Must Read" lists.

I have my own personal category for certain types of novels: "Stupid People Doing Stupid Things, and Why Should I Care?" The characters in Anna Karenina mostly fall into this category, still, somehow, Tolstoy makes the novel interesting. Levin and Kitty are pretty much the only characters who are sympathetic. Anna Karenina is totally self-absorbed and self-pitying. I felt no pity whatsoever for her. I realize Tolstoy was making social statements about Russian culture at that time, but it might have worked better if Anna was a better person who was victimized by society and fought bravely rather than being pretty much a basket case. SPOILER ALERT:When Anna comitted suicide, I didn't care, was glad to get this character out of the novel.The translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is suberb. Years ago, when I was 14 I read War and Peace, translated by Louise and Alymer Maude with a forward by Clifton Fadiman. That was a good translation as well. Later, in my 30s, I tried to read War and Peace again, the Constance Garnett translation. It was, for me at least, pretty bad. A few years ago I bought War and Peace, the Pevear and Volokhonsky version and expect that to be a fine translation when I try reading the novel again.

If your only acquaintance with Anna Karenina in the movies, just be aware that she is NOT the heroine of this very long book. Anna is the example of what a woman should bot be.. Instead, the real heroine is Princess Kitty, the young woman who is initially in love with Count Vronsky, but ultimately marries Levin who is clearly Tolstoy's alter ego as Tolstoy has Levin spouting page after page of Tolstoy's own half-baked theories on the superiority of rural over urban life and the superiority of the peasants over the aristocrats.Kitty comes to realize that she needs to exchange her city luxuries for the simpler country life and in caring for Levin's tubercular. brother at the end of his life, Levin comes to recognize her superior nature.Anna, in her obsessive love of Vronsky becomes a harridan, and in the end, outcast from polite society, ends her life. Once you wade through all of Tolstoy's philosophy, you realize why the movies boiled the story down to its tragic essence.

Settled on 3 StarsAnna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy was written and set in mid 1870 Russia. This is a period of great change and reform setting up the Russian Revolution some 40 years later.My version was the Constance Garnett translation of 1901 and revisions. Though many readers complain about keeping track of the names of the characters, I had no problem whatever in this regard. The novel is titled Anna Karenina, but I found her tragic love story came second to the story of Levin, who is the acknowledged stand in for Tolstoy himself. An equal amount of time is spent on Levin's romance and marriage to Kitty. However, to me, the core of Tolstoy's book is Levin's search for the spiritual meaning to life and his eventual belief in God. There are long passages about agricultural practices and the beauty and purity of the countryside. Some of these very long sections go on for pages and weren't interesting. The same can be said of the passages on the existing political machinations. While I love history and know little of Russia's politics of the era, there was too much detail of committees and people that were uninspiring to me. I'm sorry I also lacked enthusiasm for the religious and philosophical themes of Levin's inner narrative. These discourses went on as long as a chapter and dragged the story down for me, the plot moved forward at a glacial pace. I admit I struggled and eventually skimmed over paragraphs that didn't hold my attention. Sadly, I really don't feel I missed much doing this. Occasionally the writing confused me. Perhaps Tolstoy was being too subtle and not stating things outright. I did not like most of the characters in this novel and found them to be childish, melodramatic and irrational. I never really grasped a very good sense of the essence of Anna or her attraction to Vronsky. I'm extremely disappointed that I didn't like Anna Karenina. In terms of its literary legacy it rates 4 stars or higher; in terms of my personal reading enjoyment it rates 2.5 stars.

This book could happily have been ~300 pages long, so by the time Anna fell in front of the train I was rooting for it as a sign that the book was close to over.

One book, but in fact two stories: that of Anna, the wife of the very stable but boring Karenin; and that of Levin a man of great doubts and a powerfull wil. Both are very strongly in search for happyness, but in different directions. For Anna thist lies outside her cold marriage, but social pressure and the (inevitable?) evolution of the affair with Vronsky is driving her to insanity. Levin too is tempted by insanity, but he finds stability in marriage, and in the end also in faith. The story and the most important characters are wel develeppod, but occasionely Tolstoi looses himself in diverging stories, as in War and Peace. All in all, this is a really great novel, especcially because of the psychological development of Anna en Levin. The story is lively, there is less moralising in it.

I know this book is on many all time best novels lists, and, having loved War and Peace when I first read it some 35 years ago, I had expected to like Anna Karenina. But I didn't. I found Anna and Vronsky and Karenin to all be odious (and Oblonsky for that matter). If anything, they deserved each other. I liked Levin, but found him frustrating and his pseudo-epiphany at the end rather trite. I thought Kitty and Dolly were shallow and inept.I kept looking for some insightful commentary on Russian society, an indictment of the Petersburg world in which, as Vronsky observes, "paltry, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people" embrace conventional morality and real people "abandon themselves unblushingly to all their passions and laugh at everything else." But in the end all I could see was an admonition be faithful (to God, not one's spouse).I kept wondering whether I was missing some nuance, whether a different translation might have connected the dots in a way that this one did not. Oh, well...