Book Review: Anna Karenina

I have to admit that I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to get to Ms. Anna. E bought me a vintage copy of this years ago now, missing a cover, and was so proud of buying me a book. Both for the sake of the content and my man's heart, I should have read this sooner. Reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog with its rhapsodizing of Tolstoy and Russian literature, and the Karenina-inspired cat names, finally pushed me over the edge.

Much like Pride & Prejudice, which I initially found hard to get into, I found Anna rough at first, largely because I have no background in Russian nomenclatures. How someone can be Oblonsky, Stepan Arkadyevitch, and Stiva simultaneously, or Kostya = Levin = Konstantin Dmitrievitch, is baffling (Not even my esoteric knowledge of the Hungarian practice of fronting family names before surnames could help me here).

I found the story gripping, but the story flows because the characters are so finely crafted. Much of the story is inward, but Tolstoy manages to capture the fine details of human interaction, portraying his characters with such finesse that you feel you know them, could anticipate their reactions, see their humanity. The book is a thousand or so pages, and took a few subway commutes, but I found myself looking forward to following Anna and Kitty in their respective adventures, as if I were meeting old friends, and I found that I was more observant of the passengers around me, their quirks, their flaws. Anna's breathtaking end was visible chapters in advance, I could feel her desperation and sense her jealousy and anxiety - I turned the pages, speeding to her end, hoping she wouldn't prove predictable, that Tolstoy would break his believability and make Anna do something inconsistent. Alas.


At the end of the book, I found Levin's words to be inspirational: we must find a way to enjoy the small things, to take advantage of the pleasures afforded us, and to not be so lost in the big picture that we become down and lost. Like Anna, we have to stay away from becoming so burrowed down and proud, buried within ourselves, that we can't live. I saw Levin's thoughts emerge from Elegance, with Paloma's search for meaning and connection. I can't say that I'm surprised: I dove into Anna knowing it was a classic, and I now know why: Tolstoy magnificently describes the minutest and most clear details of everyday human life, striking at the core of what it means to be human. And that is timeless, priceless.