Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

4/10

I just finished reading this book today. What a doosy. It was long. And not my favorite. I didn't hate it, just didn't enjoy it all that much.

It is about fancy pants Russian upper-class society and all of their goings on. Most of the characters (and by 'most' I mean all but maybe one or two) are very dislikable. First of all, Anna sucks. Usually you're supposed to like the character that the book is named after, but I thought she was the most annoying person ever. She has an affair and leaves her husband (who is a nice guy by the way albeit a bit of a weirdy), abandons her son who she supposedly loves, and runs off with this dude, Vronsky. Then she gets way depressed because she is now an outcast in society due to her scandalous affair and whines and whines about it. Pity party U.S.A. Or U.S.S.R. as it were. Then she just starts to peck and peck away at Vronsky about every tiny thing and drives them both insane. Oh boy, get a grip lady. I did like, however, the situation she gets herself in at the end. Oh yeah, I won't give it away, but she gets what's coming.

Plus, this book shouldn't even be called 'Anna Karenina', but rather 'Constantine Levin'. That's what I say. He was the main character. He was the Tolstoy mouthpiece and the guy who was actually likable in this whole book. I related to this Levin fellow quite nicely. He was a breath of fresh air. He was a good dude and cared about other people. All the other characters were so selfish that it was quite maddening. I will give Tolstoy this, he does know how to write. He could describe the minutest event with perfect clarity. His descriptions of all the many different characters and their personalities was certainly something remarkable. Seriously, there were so many characters and they each had such different and unique personalities that you felt as though you knew them yourself for a long while.

Well, looks like I've gone on long enough. Well-written book, but just hard to ultimately enjoy due to the largely annoying actions and personalities of most of the characters. I probably missed out on a lot of the deeper meanings of the book I'm sure. So lets just put that out there.

Two quotes:

"Consolation in all human sorrows could be given only by love and faith...there are no sorrows too trivial for Christ's compassion."

"Hypocrisy in anything at all may deceive the most intelligent, shrewdest man, but the dullest child recognizes it no matter how skillfully it is concealed and is repelled by it."