It has taken me a long time to finally finish this book--all 817 pages of it. I started it at the beginning of last summer, and gave up in order to read shorter books with shorter character lists. It's true. I definitely chickened out. Halfway through reading it, I even began wondering why in the world Tolstoy named the thing Anna Karenina when it was about so many other people as well. Oh, and each of these people have about 4 variations of names each. No kidding.
As I read though, even as the main narratives unfolded slowly in and out of agricultural and historical explanations, I got pulled into the story. After long stints of reading, I walked around with long Russian names in my head and their problems still running through my mind. When I went outside in the summer air, I thought about Levin as he walked through his farmland and Tolstoy's words that so realistically described things like wheat, and grass, and dirt. Just simple things like that. My initial thoughts were that I would be detached all the way through, especially since the narrative isn't gripping and wasn't the type to keep me on the edge of my seat. But I was wrong, because the slowness of the story made the characters grow on me, and I felt like I spent weeks with them as their lives progressed and their problems came to a head.
I felt a mixture of pity and annoyance for Anna, I loved Darya, I admired Levin, and I disliked Vronsky.
It's a big job to sum up my thoughts about this book, especially since my time reading it was broken up into two summers. Sometime, I plan to read it again in a much shorter amount of time in order to soak it in more cohesively. I was constantly amazed, though, by the skill Tolstoy has in rendering characters and their most complex emotions in such a clear way. The social problems that he addresses in this work made me stop reading many times just to think. How is it that women who sleep with men other than their husbands are shunned from society, when the men are able to walk freely, and even congratulated? Anna becomes socially paralyzed, and her increasing, even paranoid dependence on Vronsky to support her and love her (to make her fall worth it) ends up ruining her. She jumps under a moving train. Darya's husband is obviously unfaithful to her, and she partially envies Anna for being the one to take control as the unfaithful one, instead of the one hurt. I thought a lot about what lengths women go to to control their idea of happiness, and the men that they believe will give them ultimate happiness, and how that rage for control is so destructive.
Well, that is the end of this questionable book review. I call it questionable because it's scattered, which is usually the state of my brain after reading a book. But what I love about books is that some part of them gets ingrained into me each time I read. They don't just bounce off, they soak into me and something or everything about them affects how I think.
Next up: Les Miserables (523/1463 pages read so far!)
