Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More than a remake of Anna Karenina, August 28, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
If you've read Tolstoy's Karenina you more or less know what to expect of the plot. Unhappily married woman has an affair, abandons her family and so on and so forth. There is more to this book than that.
Anna K comes from a Russian Jewish community in Rego Park but at no point does she feel as if she belongs. A misfit who loves literature and dreams of being the inspiration for the next great work of literature, she settles for wealth and marries Alex, a successful Russian businessman; has a child who she is not terribly attached to and falls for another lover of literature. The secondary plot is of the love between Lev and Katia who belong to the Bukharan Jewish community which still holds tightly to its cultural rules and traditions.
Reyn has trimmed many subplots from the original to create a more streamlined book. Unfortunately the trials of tribulations of the original Anna K do not carry over well into this age of emancipation. Divorce is no longer the taboo it was in Tolstoy's time and a languishing, unemployed, dependent and unhappy woman in the modern age can be hard to sympathise with. Anna's choices seem odd in this day and age. She marries Alex for his money, is often a contemptuous snob and at best is a dreamer who works very hard to sabotage her own happiness.
Reyn's writing, though, is wonderful. Her control of language, her ability to draw a picture with words and her creation of a window into the Russian immigrant communities in Queens is excellent. The story of Lev and Katia (Levin and Kitty in the original) is well drawn. The Bukharan community that they belong to, with its rules, chauvinistic attitudes and codes of honor were fascinating.
As a debut novel this work does much to show the author's potential. If the book failed for me it was because the shadow of the original Karenina sat too heavy on it and the character's choices did not translate well into the modern world.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, but with a slight bump at the end., September 1, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I just finished Tolstoy's Anna Karenina a few weeks ago, so when I was offered this re-telling of that classic story to review for the Amazon Vine program, the timing was serendipitous.
In this modern version, author Irina Reyn is faithful to the original yet manages to give it a thoroughly fresh, original flavor, and the good news is that although familiarity with Tolstoy's Anna will make Reyn's version all the more enjoyable in making the inevitable connections and comparisons, I don't believe it necessary to have read Tolstoy to enjoy Reyn's take.
The theme is the same, and it's one whose consequences haven't really changed as much as we might think in the more than 100 years that have passed between tellings. We get to meet Anna here before her marriage to Alex, when she is a 37-year old beauty in a Russian-Jewish enclave of NYC, lovely and admired, cultured and educated, but troublingly single. Things haven't really changed much in society, and less so in immigrant populations, where a 37-year old single woman in danger of never marrying or having children is a crisis. So she marries.
She knows from the beginning that she feels no passion for her husband either physically or emotionally, but finds comfort in the securities of marriage and motherhood. When she meets David, their affair brings to light all of the ways Anna has covered up her own sense of self, but what I got from it was even more alarming: the more glaring fact that that may very well be due to the fact that there is perhaps not much there to cover up. For Anna is, underneath her elegant and mysterious demeanor, empty and unremarkable. What does she really care about? Is there anything at all that moves her the same way novels and politics do David, the way French movies affect Lev, her cousin's husband? Even her young son, although deeply loved, arouses no unbridled emotion in Anna. She has spent most of her life primarily engaged in two things: dreaming vaguely about flawed but romantic heroes like Bronte's Heathcliff, and creating her image of the stylish Russian beauty everyone believes she is. She has never tried too hard to achieve or do anything in particular, and that empty space is what no husband, child, or lover can fill. The tragedy of Anna is that she never sees this, because she's incapable of looking at herself through her own eyes. It's as if she herself has no eyes at all with which to judge anyone or anything, even herself. Having chosen her lover over her husband and child, her life quickly loses what little focus it had. In her forties now and living with a younger man whose love she's unsure of, she spirals downward into depression over all that she has lost - her beauty, youth, time, her husband, son, respectability, community, and now the lover for whom she'd left it all. What's left? She has no reservoir to dip into, and don't we all need that? If nothing else, we need that part of ourselves that is uniquely US, that takes comfort in our own company, that draws strength and inspiration from within, like an internal bank account we deposit bits of confidence and other good things into from time to time, when we can, saving it for the rainy days that come for all of us at some point. Anna has never done this, and so there's nothing there when all the external things are gone.
The one thing I felt was poorly done, and is the sole reason I give this book four stars instead of five, is the very abrupt and unclear ending. I don't do spoilers so won't give anything away, but suffice it to say that if you have NOT read Tolstoy's story, the end may leave you with a giant question mark over your head. Then again, maybe not and I'm just naturally thick. I know it would have frustrated me, though, had I not known how Anna Karenina ended and assumed this ended the same way (and who knows - maybe it DIDN'T end the same way...that's how obscure the ending is!). Although this faltering at the very end (literally the last page) is no small thing, I found this story evocative and well-written in a sparse, sincere tone. I liked the fact that there were no drawn-out or graphic details of the couple's affair, not because I'm opposed to that but because it would have greatly detracted from the story, which is not nearly so much about the affair itself as it is about Anna's emptiness and the repercussions of all the decisions - and lack of decisions, really - she's made in her life. I would still recommend it, and for those who are fans of Tolstoy's original tale, as I am, it will be especially satisfying.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quite a debut, September 1, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I'll start by saying that it's been years since I read Tolstoy's classic, ANNA KARENINA, the book on which WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNA K. is a modern "retelling". Therefore, I will not make comparisons and the review will be on this novel as it stands alone.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNA K. is a well written, evocative tale whose central character, Anna K., is a Russian immigrant of Jewish descent living in modern day Queens, N.Y. She is portrayed, interestingly, as a highly self conscious provocateur whose vanity is barely overshadowed by her egocentricity. Somewhat surprisingly, this is not to say she is necessarily lacking in admirable traits. We can certainly sympathize with her struggles of identity, independence, and communal convention. Early in the book, we see Anna as a woman in her mid 20s whose expectations of a mate are the literary amalgam of Heathcliff and Darcy. What she gets, years later, is Alex K., a successful businessman of like heritage who is more inclined toward the pedantic.... Although the union produces a son, the book's predominant theme has little to do with family but rather Anna's romantic relationships and adultery.
Despite the author's ability to tell an excellent story with very well drawn characters, it was sometimes difficult for me to follow the thread that held the fragments/stories together. We have the tale of a rather self obsessed and dispassionate woman who seems to always be looking for a "greener pasture". Money, in this case, is not the motivating force. As the book puts it at one point, Anna is looking for a mate/husband who not only possesses the courage and strength to be a warrior but also the intellectual and literary gifts to then turn around and write about the fight. This journey takes her from Alex to her cousin's fiancй and then, later, to that same cousin's husband (different person). The backdrop to all of this is the force by which society imposes adherence to its conventions and the consequences/alienation that comes from one person's refusal. As indicated above, this debut novel by Ms. Reyn portends good things. I will definitely look for her next.
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