Anna Karenina (Penguin Classics) | Leo Tolstoy | Fate and love, ultimately lead to Anna's undoing

Anna Karenina (Penguin Classics) | Leo Tolstoy | The Greatest Novel of all Time

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Anna Karenina (Pen...

	Anna Karenina (Penguin Classics) Leo Tolstoy Penguin Books, 2003 - 864 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This is an award-winning new translation of the great Russian novel.

Fate and love, ultimately lead to Anna's undoing

Classic Tolstoy for a reason and his best book, far surpassing War and Peace. Tolstoy writes with passion about unattainable love and also the realities when love becomes realized. Anna could be any person who seeks out life and personal happiness, but without the hollywood ending.

The book is slow at times, and it took me over a year to read, but keep with it as it will impassion you by the close.

The Greatest Novel of all Time

I can't improve upon E. A Solinas' (MD USA) comments, but I can concur with them. The novel is epic and makes manifest Tolstoy's genius, depth, and internal struggles. He comprehensively covers a wide range of human struggles from the inane to the sublime. Also, I don't speak Russian, and therefore can not comment on the translation accuracy, but I can say Penguin does a very good job of editing and review that makes the novel just so enjoyable to read. There is no doubt; this is the greatest novel ever written and peerless in its category.

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Sense of Self

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

- Leo Tolstoy from Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is a beautifully written novel about three families: the Oblonskys, the Levins, and the Karenins. The first line (one of the most famous in literature) hints at Tolstoy's own views about happy and unhappy marriages having these same three families also represent three very different societal and physical locations in Russia in addition to distinctly different views on love, loyalty, fidelity, happiness and marital bliss.

Tolstoy seems to stress that `trusting companionships" are more durable and filled with happiness versus "romantic passion" that bursts with flames and then slowly; leaves ashes rather than a firm, solid foundation to build upon.

It is like reading a soap opera with all of its twists and turns where the observer is allowed to enter into the homes, the minds and the spirits of its main characters. The moral compass in the book belongs to Levin whose life and courtship of Kitty mirrors much of Leo Tolstoy's own courtship of his wife Sophia. Levin's personality and spiritual quest is Tolstoy's veiled attempt at bringing to life his own spiritual peaks and valleys and the self doubts that plagued him his entire life despite his happy family life and the fact that he too found love in his life and a committed durable marriage. At the other end of the spectrum is Anna, who also because of her individual choices and circumstances, falls into despair.

It is clear that Tolstoy wants the reader to come away with many messages about the sanctity of marriage, love and family life. He also wants us to be mindful of the choices that we make in life and the affect that these choices have upon ourselves, our station and path in life as well as the affect upon those that we profess to love. Tolstoy also wants us to examine what makes our lives happy or not; and what is at the root of either end result. Levin and Kitty are the happiest married couple; yet Levin faces his own double bind when struggling against domestic bliss and his need for independence on the other hand and how to achieve both (if that is possible) without relinquishing that which made him who he was born to be.

Anna Karenina and Konstantin Levin are the primary protagonists in the novel and both are rich and fine characters in their own right. Both of them focus on self; one however finds the self to be a nurturer which puts value into life very much as a farmer; while the other views self with despair and as a punisher or destroyer. Both views, diametrically opposed, force the characters on very different paths and lives for themselves. Then there is the dilemma of forgiveness versus vengeance. The very epigram for the novel from Romans states: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." Yet vengeance upon oneself or others is not up to individuals but God; and yet the characters are haunted about what forgiveness is or isn't and by the hollowness of words versus heartfelt and soulfully reflective actions. The themes of social change in Russia, family life's blessings and virtues and farming (even if it is simply the goodness one puts into life and how one cultivates it and others) dominate the novel's landscape. Trains also play a symbolic importance in the novel and it is odd that Tolstoy himself years after writing Anna Karenina dies himself in a train station after setting off from his home in an emotional cloud.

Sometimes the names of the characters themselves can be confusing: so a hint to the reader might be to think of each Russian character's name as having three parts: the first name (examples here are for Levin and Kitty) like Konstantin or Ekaterina, a patronymic which is the father's first name accompanied by a suffix which means son of or daughter of like Dmitrich (son of Dmitri) or Alexandrovna (daughter of Alexander) and then the surname like Levin or Shcherbatskaya. Thus the explanations for the Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya (nicknamed Kitty) and Konstantin Dmitrich Levin (Levin).

I loved the book and its details and the richness of the characterizations as well as the storytelling technique of the great Tolstoy and I have to agree with Tolstoy when he stated, "I am very proud of its architecture-its vaults are joined so that one cannot even notice where the keystone is. " The vaults: "Anna and Levin" are joined with the very first line of the novel and with their focus on themselves.

Rating: A

Bentley/2007

Anna Karenina (Penguin Classics)

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A pleasure to read

Single greatest novel ever written? Not really. However a very enjoyable read. Tolstoy weaves his magic with beautifully written paragraphs that transport you back to 18th century good old, antedeluvian Russia. His expressive and uncomplicated descriptions of the luminous country side were so poignant it was as if I were standing in Levin's shoes seeing everything through my favorite character's eyes.

The only perplex I had with this book was the numerous names for just one character. You are emphatically required to be on the ball reading through Tolstoy's world, else you may become a wee bit confused as to who he's refering to at that moment in the story lol.

It was insightful, enlightening, inviting and an all round pleasure to read. =)

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Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is a brilliantly conceived and poignantly written novel. Using many dynamic and well developed characters, Tolstoy unravels a marvelous tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of late nineteenth century fashionable russian society. Tolstoy fairly represents each character presenting even those who have done wrong merely as fallible human beings who are doing their best. As a Christian Anarchist, Tolstoy believed that morality and social customs of the day were not necessary to follow, and this belief comes through clearly in this novel. Characters are ruled by chance, and they neither get rewarded for doing the right thing or reap the consequences of their mistakes; they are simply fated to be destroyed. This perspective in which it is written contributes to the somewhat dark and impersonal tone of the novel. There is no real good in this novel, apart from Konstantin Levin and his love for Kitty, and at the same time, there is no real evil. Characters like Stiva Oblonsky alternate between genuine compassion and kindness to lust and self absorption.
The structure of the book is one of its most masterful aspects. The story flows seamlessly between the lives of three different families, and, though these people are not always interacting, Tolstoy draws distinct comparisons between them to the reader. Overall, this is an engaging and worthwhile novel

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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