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Title: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, David Horovitch ISBN: 1-85549-944-4 Publisher: Cover to Cover Cassettes Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 28 List Price(USD): $149.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (213 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Timeless Work of Art
Comment: I will admit that when I began reading ANNA KARENINA I was a little bored. For one thing, Anna doesn't make her appearance until Chapter Eighteen. For another, the book just seemed to be "they went here and did this, then went there and did that." Luckily for me, my boredom soon turned to fascination and I saw the book for what it is: a richly textured panorama of the 19th century Russian aristocracy.
Some of the events in ANNA KARENINA are a bit melodramatic but Tolstoy weaves in so many details of everyday life that, most of the time, the melodrama is totally believable and utterly convincing.
People hoping to read a novel revolving around an adulterous affair may be disappointed with this book. The affair between Anna and Count Vronsky isn't the novel's main concern. In fact, the reactions of Anna's friends and family are given far more attention and importance than are Anna and Vronsky, themselves. This is all to the book's credit, however, and not to its detriment.
I think ANNA KARENINA's greatest strength, and the thing that makes it a timeless classic, is Tolstoy's masterful depiction of each character's rich emotional life. In this beautiful book, we can really see the universality of love, sadness, tragedy, temptation, vulnerability and so much more. I don't think there's an adult alive who couldn't, in some way, relate to this book and the wide range of emotions it depicts. It is almost epic in scope.
I didn't fall in love with any of the characters, but there were none I really disliked, either. All are fascinating, flawed human beings with both good and bad points. Tolstoy was certainly a master at creating believable characters and characters with whom the reader could identify. I could find echoes of myself in almost every one of them.
While the climax of ANNA KARENINA is melodramatic, Tolstoy wrote it in a very understated and beautiful manner. It was so sad, so moving, that it brought tears to my eyes. The denouement is quiet and the book ends on a pitch perfect note, leaving the reader satisfied and, yes, changed.
Is this the best book ever written, as many people have hailed it to be? It depends on what you, as a reader, are looking for, of course, but it is certainly one of the best books ever written. It is a tapestry of extraordinary richness and depth, written in a beautifully quiet, but very involving tone. Whether you love it or don't quite think it's "your thing," it is certainly a novel that is not to be missed. It really is a work of art and it has proven itself to be timeless.
Note on the translation: I read an older translation of this book when I was in high school and I found the new Pevear and Volokhonsky translation to be far, far superior. It is far more "Russian" and the prose is much more flowing. If you're going to read ANNA KARENINA and, like me, you can't read Russian, I would highly recommend this translation.
Rating: 5
Summary: A most artistic recreation of life
Comment: After two months, I have finished the great novel ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy that was given to me by Jenny and Gerry (thank you!). I was nervous to take it on, this edition has 924 pages, but I am so, so, so glad that I did. I enjoyed almost every bit of the book, and feel I have from reading it a new understanding of writing and of literature.
This edition from Modern Library Classics was translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett with a revision by Leonard Kent and Nina Berberova. The prose reads very easily, in clear, accessible English for today. (But don't worry: It's not "The Good News Bible does Tolstoy.") While the book is long, and by looking at a calendar and my new paperback's rumpled cover and scuffed binding, I could tell I'd been reading it a long time, it felt as if it were passing quickly. Tolstoy's narrative moves easily from stage to stage -- there's no feeling of contrived suspense or narrative manipulation. The lives of the characters progress naturally, and what Tolstoy tells the reader, the reader believes and doesn't question (this reader didn't.)
The story focuses on just a few main characters, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (and her husband Aleksey Alexandrovich Karenin), Count Aleksey Kirilich Vronksy, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin and Kitty Scherbatskaya. These individuals propel the story, and it is their lives and relationships that we follow most closely. Supporting characters include Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky, his wife Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya and Levin's brothers, a small cast for a grand Russian novel.
On the back cover, a quote about the novel, attributed to Matthew Arnold, says that we are "not to take ANNA KARENINA as a work of art; we are to take it as a slice of life." I think it is really both.
The theme of the novel centers on relationships, and those relationships in 19th Century Russian artistocratic society of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Anna Karenina is an elite, beautiful woman married to a powerful government official, Aleksey Karenin, with whom she has a son, Seryozha. She falls in love with and has an extended affair with the rich, dapper Count Aleksey Vronksy, and has a child with him, a daughter. Their story follows her inability to ask for or later receive a divorce from her husband, and her increasing unhappiness in the relationship with Vronsky, as she is bannished by society and resents the freedom he has as a man to move in his old circles. Her jealousy and insecurity grow throughout the course of the novel, rendering her nearly mad.
The other relationship, which serves as a contrast and foil for Karenina and Vronsky, is that of Levin and Kitty Scherbatskaya. Levin is a somewhat older man than the young and beautiful Kitty, daughter of one of Moscow's many princes. He is an aristocratic farmer and cares for his family's vast agrarian holdings in the country thoughtfully and meticulously. At the beginning of the novel, he has been courting Kitty, but had returned to the country for awhile. When he returns to ask her to marry him, he sees that she is infatuated with Vronksy, whom he doesn't trust. Vronsky meets Anna Karenina at a ball and stops calling on Kitty, breaking her heart. After a long separation, Kitty and Levin meet again and she agrees to marry him, happily. Their storyline follows their marriage and the birth of their son, Dimitry.
It is definitely true that this novel is most definitely a slice out of life. The characters are incredibly realistic as is the pace and plot of the novel. But the artistry lies in Tolstoy's effective setting of one relationship against another. It's not as black and white as it might be in a lesser writer's hands. The "good couple" Levin and Kitty have difficulties in adjusting to each other and in their relationship. Levin, like Anna, is jealous, but unlike Vronsky and Anna, he is motivated by love and generosity to overcome his angry feelings for the benefit of a harmonious home. Other aspects of the two different relationships are set off by one another. A very compelling character is made of Aleksey Alexandrovich Karenin, whom Anna despises, but who undergoes a convincing and sad degeneration of self as Anna leaves him and he maintains custody of the son that she loves. (He gets caught up with a society woman who has converted to a fundamentalist, ecstatic Christianity and gives him advice, ultimately leading him to allow a French faux-mystic to decide the fate of his marriage to Anna.)
The novel has a well-known climax, which I won't reveal if you don't know it, but it has beautifully written and rich "falling action" which allows the reader to come through the shock and pain to what Levin discovers beyond the love of the family life he craved.
This is definitely a masterwork, completely readable and worth the time spent on every page.
Rating: 3
Summary: a little agonizing to finish...
Comment: I would have enjoyed this book so much more if it weren't for its length and its long but unnecessary events and dialogue in its pages. About halfway through the book, every page was very painful for me to read. I kept on marking the last official page with my bookmark and was glad to see the pages between the page and me dwindle, ever so slowly. The plot? Beautiful Anna Karenina is married, has a son, enjoys a nice status being the wife of a Russian official named Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin, but she's rather bored by her husband (she doesn't love him at all, in fact, there are times when she hates him). One day, she meets Count Alexey Vronsky, who is, of course, dashing and handsome, so she falls in love with him and becomes his lover. Sound familiar? ...I didn't see why it was called "one of the world's greatest love stories in world literature." Maybe I just don't understand great classics. Maybe Tolstoy's style of writing isn't getting to me. Whatever the case may be, I didn't think there wasn't much love in the story (once again, I am a romantic, so this may have an impact), and Anna and Vronsky aren't even the main characters in the novel (...plotwise, they weren't mentioned as much as I thought they would have been). There's an excessive amount of characters, most of them not even that important to the story (SO MANY RELATIVES!), and I often got many of them confused. In the end, I just gave up trying to discern who's who (if you're expecting a master list of characters in Anna Karenina from me, think again). Way too much dialogue, a lot of it was really dull and boring to me. Sure, most of the characers reacted to Anna and Vronsky's relationship, which is important, but in other scenes, they talked about the most senseless topics. I was not amused nor entertained. The ending, however, should hit most readers powerfully. I did feel a sense of closure, though. Poor Anna...
I understand that romance may not be the #1 theme in the novel - mostly the ideals and values of the Russian society at the time, and so on and so forth - but you could have warned me about it when the description said "one of the world's greatest love stories in world literature" ...
Set along her story is the tale of Konstantin Levin, a Russian man whose values are very much Leo Tolstoy's own values. I found his side of the story refreshing (he finds loves and is happy while Anna finds... love and isn't quite so happy afterall), and his struggle to win the love of his life was well written. However, after he finally wins Kitty's heart, there are still many more chapters of their life, which I found a little...long and dull. They got married, they lived happily in the countryside, yay, so why are there 500+ more pages to go? ...
Sorry, I'm aware this -is- a great classic, and if I read it and actually absorb its values, maybe I will appreciate this more. It's just that the plot was buried beneath a lot of unnecessary pages, and that has distorted my view of this novel.
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