Anna Karenina

I feel I'm not qualified to review this book. I'm just a regular guy, not a literature professor, but maybe my comments will be helpful to some. This book is really good. It's all about the characters. Many times while I was reading I wondered how all of this was going to end. It wasn't like a regular story where there's a pretty clear end goal, like get the bad guy, or solve the mystery. It was more like things are just happening and I wonder what's going to happen next. I thought maybe it's just going to stop abruptly, as if Tolstoy would just suddenly be done writing about all these characters, but it really did have a solid ending to conclude everything. Thinking back on the story I remember many ups and downs and tense moments and light hearted moments, it was very enjoyable and pretty easy to read.One thing that really amazed me was how well Tolstoy could switch between different characters and settings. Everyone had distinct personalities and the way they were all portrayed was with so much compassion and understanding that as a reader I could really see parts of myself in everyone. There was no one character that I related to more than any other. I was able to relate to every single one of them differently. I believe this is the reason Tolstoy is considered a master.The pace of the book is a little slow for me because I'm a slow reader, but in retrospect I feel like the pace was actually pretty good and it only felt slow because I had absolutely no idea where the story was going. Every chapter had something new happening and the story just strolled right along. Probably like riding a tractor for 50 miles. You've got plenty of time to look at all the flowers and clouds and barns and animals along the way, it takes forever, but it never stops moving.It helped a lot to have this book on my kindle because towards the end there was more and more french that was easy to translate with the kindle. The port to the kindle was perfect. I saw no strange spacing or oddly misspelled words.Overall I recommend giving this book a shot. Don't be discouraged by the length. I realize a reader may feel compelled to read this particular book just so they can say that they did. It's got that trophy book status. I feel like that's a bad thing though. If you find yourself a few hundred pages in and are interested in what's going on, then keep going. If however after a few hundred pages you feel like it's a chore to read, then don't bother, it's not going to suddenly become more interesting after any point in the book. It's very consistent, you can trust this author and the translation, the ending won't let you down, there will be no long lulls. What you get in the beginning is what you get through the entire book, it's very steady and very high quality writing.

I have never enjoyed a book more than this one. From beginning to end, every part, every sentence, every word. It was surprisingly easy to read as well, although I suppose some credit should go to the translator for that aspect. The Russian names are a bit tricky, of course, i usually said them out loud to try and get them down. Actually I read most of the book aloud, just to slow me down and make sure I didn't miss anything, plus it sounds so good hearing the elegance of his writing. As a matter of fact, when I heard that they made this into a movie, my idea of the best way to appreciate this book in a movie was to have a microphone, a chair and and excellent reader just reading the words into the camera. Nothing else, because you don't NEED anything else. If you looking for a thrilling story line with lots of twists and unexpected turns, this is probably not the book for you. I mean it's an interesting enough story, but it's involves things that happen all the time to ordinary people. What's so enjoyable is the way he DESCRIBES what's going on in each scene, each conversation, the thoughts and emotions of the characters as they deal with whatever unfolds in their lives. Especially I like he way he jumps around in his descriptions, what's going through her mind, what she says, what's her body language, what he sees, what he thinks, how it affects him, descriptions of the little physical clues to their feelings. He's moving around from character to character, from dialogue to thoughts to physical descriptions, and as you read, all of a sudden YOU'RE THERE! Actually you're more than there, because you see it from many different perspectives, and you just know exactly what they're feeling, thinking. It's really breathtaking is the best way to describe it as he's moving you around the scene seeing both the surface and deep into the character's thoughts and feelings. He even gets into the mind of the damn hunting dog, and after I got done rolling on the floor with laughter I got up and said "YES, YES, that's exactly how they think!" This was my first Russian novel (other that something on Crime and Punishment years ago that I never finished and can't really recall) but it won't be my last, I'll read this again at least once, then will explore whatever else is out there. In fact the only down side to reading this book is that it may have ruined me for less compelling writers. Charles Dickens has always been one of my favorite writers, but I can't seem to get through David Copperfield all of a sudden...maybe happy people ARE all pretty much the same.

This is much more than a novel, it is a view into 19th century Russian society from top to bottom. We see the lives and work of peasants, the intellectual struggles of the well-informed, and the financial challenges facing wealthy city-dwellers and landed gentry. It all becomes very personal and three-dimensional. You see what people say, what people really mean, and how it is interpreted by others. The story of Anna Karenina is actually not a summary of the book, but only a part of a larger tapestry.

The text is very poorly formatted and full of typos. The paragraphs aren't even properly separated. It looks like someone copy-and-pasted an online version into a Word doc. (Since this work is in the public domain, that might be exactly what happened.) It's also freakishly large: This book is 10 inches tall by 7 inches wide by 2 inches thick. AND it's a flimsy paperback, so its huge size makes to flop around terribly. It's a crude copy, not professional at all.

This is my third or fourth attempt at reading Anna Karenina. As a wannabe writer, I’m simply in awe of Tolstoy is able to articulate the inner voice and the conflicts that arise inside each one of us in such a believable manner.That said, this book with its vast cast of characters is a tough read. There is no one protagonist - not even Anna - and the entire book feels like a soap opera where the story is moved forward by different people at different points of time.One also marvels at the strength of Tolstoy’s imagination where he is able to narrate inconsequential incidents - like Levin’s visit to his wife’s aunt’s house to ask after someone’s death - with the same attention to detail as other, more important events.

Anna Karenina is a novel that beguiles and intrigues, 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. In Moscow, Anna Karenina meets the charming Vronsky, and together they indulge in an affair despite her husband Karenin. One might argue that Anna is selfish in her passionate romance, having to choose between Vronsky and her young son. Nevertheless, I can’t help but pity her desperate actions as she is trapped in a marriage full of emotionless conventionality.

I read War and Peace because I wanted to read it before watching the recent adaptation. I loved it so much that I wanted to keep reading Tolstoy and so, logically, turned to Anna Karenina. For me, Tolstoy's strength is in his immediately engaging and flawed characters, and their vulnerability forces me to take them under my wing. Because it's such a famous book, I knew how it ended before I picked it up. Nevertheless I was intrigued to see how that ending came about, and the story did not disappoint. He is still very relevant in terms of the secret to a happy and fulfilling life and focusing on what is important.I skipped the parts about agriculture in nineteenth century Russia as this did not interest me and I didn't see what bearing it had on the fates of the characters.

Trying to adapt a novel so rich in character and detail as 'Anna Karenina' in such a short compass is a daunting task, and inevitably there must be omissions. The secondary plot line of Levin and the Princess Kitty was chosen, and they are referred to only briefly on the third disc. This is a pity, as their relationship makes an important contrast to that of Anna and Vronsky. However, the adaptation successfully tells the central story of three essentially good people, Anna, Vronsky and Karenin, who become victims of a repressive social order that enshrines propriety and honour, and yet employs double standards to judge the behaviour of men and women. It uses Tolstoy's own technique of using multiple narrators providing different perpectives on the actions of the main characters, while linking together the various short scenes that make up the story. I would single out Alison Pettit's portrayal of the maid Annushka, a warm and sympathetic commentator on her mistress's plight. Turning to the three main characters, Teresa Gallagher has the dramatic range to move from peacemaker to her sister in law Dolly and her husband on the first disc to the woman driven to the depths of despair in the last disc. The last fifteen minutes of the recording are dramatically and brilliantly realised. Toby Stephens' presentation of Vronsky catches the complexity of the character suggested by Tolstoy; he is far from being the typical army officer. But it is Nicholas Farrell who emerges as the star in his portrayal of the conscientious but emotionally detached Karenin, labouring to create the new Russia in a period of repid change. To these principals I would add Cartolyn Jones' Princess Lydia, exhibiting the disngenuous piety of someone determined to do good, and the brittle nature of the sophisticated aristocratic milieu represented by Janet Maw's Princess Betsy. Credit should be given to Ed Thomasonm for including not just Tolstoy's remark about happy and unhappy families, but his observations about marriage relationships and the nature of Russian society, and indeed in conveying the esence of the novel in such a short space. I was minded to award four stars when Levin did not make an appearance, but the quality of the performance on disc has inclined me to give five stars.

This book was my first foray into Russian literature, and I could not have had a better introduction. Tolstoy has a way of phrasing the thoughts and feelings of the characters that is so insightful, precise and identifiable that it easily transcends the innumerable differences between a modern reader and the selection of people he focuses on living in nineteenth century Russia. They are all incredibly psychologically developed and I felt as if I knew them all personally and could predict how they might react in any given situation. Tolstoy also colours his narrative so that it is seen through the eyes of the different characters, giving the reader many different viewpoints from which to perceive events and settings and so making the novel very rich. A scene from the perspective of Oblonsky, for example, is light, frivolous and faintly cynical, whereas the same situation seen through Levin's eyes is thoughtful and earnest.Unfortunately, while the human drama of the novel has stood the test of time admirably, much of Tolstoy's social commentary has not fared so well. The sections on social economy, agriculture and political systems may have ben fascinating to a contemporary Russian reader but I found them lengthy, tedious, unnecessary and, dare I say it, dull. However, I'm more than willing to ignore the effect of these passages in light of the sheer brilliance of the rest of the book.This particular translation (Penguin, 1954, this edition 2000) by Rosemary Edmonds is fantastic. Her prose is readable and appropriate, so that the book does not read like translated literature at all, but like any other nineteenth century novel. The illusion was so well-executed that the only time I was made aware that I wasn't reading original language literature was when characters discussed which pronouns to use to refer to one another, an aspect of language which is absent from modern English. Both the translation and the original writing make this a thoroughly excellent book.

I'm reading this book due to being part of a book club. I probably would never have read it if it wasnt a)for the club and b) its a free download on the kindle. While I appreciate that the free edition is probably not as well translated as the more expensive editions, the story itself that Tolstoy creates goes beyond the mere difference in translation. The way he weaves a very complex yet deeply stimulating image of Russian society, politics, economics, history, values etc, and how that impacts on the normal lives of various people is incredible and realistic. How I wonder what Tolstoy would make of our modern society now!What I also love is how Tolstoy gives us not just the actions of the characters, but there innermost thoughts and feelings as well - including the odd dog or two!!! Utterly wonderful to feel and know exactly what each character is going through and when a character such as Anna does not think of something, it shows just how far into denial she really is.I'm totally spellbound by this book and encourage others to eat it up too.Its a free kindle download, so you'd be daft not too!