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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
224 of 240 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Eternal Error,
By A Customer
This review is from: Anna Karenina (Hardcover)
According to Tolstoy, the genesis of Anna Karenina was derived from three specific events: (1) An idea for a story Tolstoy developed in 1870 about a woman who deserts her husband for another man, based, in part, on the life of his sister, Marya; (2) a newspaper story concerning the mistress of one of Tolstoy's neighbors, who, feeling only despair at being abandoned by her lover, hurled herself under a train; and (3) a sentence from Pushkin's Tales of the Balkins ("The guests were arriving at the country house..."), that Tolstoy read by chance one day in 1873. Supposedly, this sentence from Pushkin fueled Tolstoy's imagination to such a degree that he completed a first draft of Anna Karenina in only three weeks.A novel about the meaning of life and the role happiness does or does not play in it, Anna Karenina is the story of a married woman's adulterous affair with Count Vronsky. As foreshadowed in the book's early pages, the affair ends tragically, for both Anna and Vronsky. The novel (which Tolstoy's contemporary, Dostoyevsky, considered "a perfect work of art"), also tells the story of Constantine Levin, a gentleman farmer whose lifelong pursuit of happiness and fulfillment culminates, not in his long-awaited marriage to Kitty Shcherbatskaya, but with the advice of a simple peasant about "living rightly, in God's way." From a few simple, yet melodramatic events (and the depths of a dizzyingly fecund imagination), Tolstoy fashioned a beautiful, profound and enduring novel dealing with stark questions of both life and religious faith as seen through the eyes of the farmer, Levin. Also a morality play, Anna Karenina delves deeply into the damaging effects of society's ostracization, especially regarding the characters of Anna and Vronsky. Many consider Anna Karenina Tolstoy's most personal work and, indeed, many of the novel's scenes do mirror Tolstoy's relationship with his own wife, Sonya. Levin's courtship of Kitty and his expressions of love for her, written with chalk on a table are reflective of Tolstoy's courtship of Sonya. Even more evocative of Tolstoy, himself, is the soul-wrenching scene in which Levin gives Kitty his diaries to read, exposing his very soul to the woman he has come to love so completely. The final scenes of the novel, especially Levin's intense search for the answer to the meaning of existence are reflective of Tolstoy's own search, dramatically documented in his beautiful memoir, A Confession, and considered by many to be one of the most truthful, agonizing and soul-searching statements of authentic spirituality. The publication of Anna Karenina coincided with the end of Tolstoy's life of material and emotional luxury. From this point on, he concentrated on a deeper and more mature quest. Although he would go on to write the beautiful novel, Resurrection, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a true existential masterpiece, Tolstoy's career reached its zenith in the character of Anna Karenina and her seemingly irrational embrace of death. Anna's husband, Karenin, is often overlooked, although he is equally compelling; a complex and emotional character who briefly embraces the doctrine of Christian forgiveness in his emotional denial over the loss of Anna. No doubt the second most famous line of the book is Vronsky's startling realization: "It showed him (Vronsky) the eternal error men make in imagining that happiness consists in the realization of their desires." Almost epic in scope and poignantly detailed, Anna Karenina represents the perfect balance of drama, morality and philosophical inquiry. How are we to live our lives, the novel asks, when all the illusions we hold so close to our heart have been stripped away? What are we to believe in and cling to? With its emphasis on drama over polemic, Anna Karenina thus embodies art of the highest order. In its portrayal of man's timeless struggle to make sense out of life while coming to terms with death, both its theme and its characters remain, now and forever, timeless.
109 of 115 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Greatest Novel Ever Written,
By A Customer
This review is from: Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club) (Mass Market Paperback)
I read this book in 1993, and I still remember the experience. It has been called the greatest novel ever written and I agree.
It is a very long book: I read a few chapters a day over a long period of time. Over time the feeling developed that the characters, and Tolstoy himself (in Levin), were people I knew -- people with whom I spent some time each day. The philosophy was mind-expanding; I'm sure my views were affected. For me, the important thing in reading this book was not to try to "get through" it, but to "visit" it as I would visit congenial neighbors. When I finished, I felt loneliness over loss of contact with the characters. I'm going to read it again some day.
94 of 99 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great master,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Anna Karenina (Kindle Edition)
While the format on Kindle2 is not perfect, it's good enough to read easily and for those that like the text-to-speech function, you can listen to it. I can't believe I've not read this before and having it available free for the Kindle spurred me into doing just that. Tolstoy is such a great master. I read once that he worked on each paragraph until it was perfect, then moved on to the next and when he got to the end, the book was finished--no editing. Amazing. Since I don't read Russian I won't get to appreciate that and the translation isn't quite so clean, but still his prose is generally so clear and crisp, it's easy to get lost in the story and spend longer reading than you intended. I truly felt drawn into the Russian society life and could picture the scenes in my mind. I appreciated Tolstoy's ability to verbalize thoughts and emotions from a character's expression or tone of voice, a real skill. It's important to note, however, that this is not as easy reading as many modern works partly because of the more stilted writing style of the period and elaborate detail and partly because of the Russian names and ways of expressing things. Each character seemed to have half a dozen name references, formal, nicknames, etc. and being unfamiliar with the Russian culture, that presented a bit of a challenge to me at first. Still the characters are so vividly portrayed eventually I got the hang of it.
There is no table of contents, but I find that less of an issue in a fiction work that I intend to read straight through. Some paragraphs are split with a line left unfilled and the next not indented, probably a result of its conversion to ebook format, and I found some oddities I expect were typos. Although I was aware of these things, they didn't detract from my absorption in the story, which is an elaborate one detailing not only Anna's love for a handsome Russian officer and all the repercussions of that for her and those around her, but the side story of Kitty, her sister-in-law's youngest sister, who was taken with the same man at first and how her life progresses. It is an epic story in eight parts that takes countless turns as the events unfold and affect the many characters' lives.
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