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All that politicking to nudge Anna past the finish line first, and now where are all the peeps?
I've hesitated, because I"m going to be a philistine. This was far from the greatest novel ever written, as some of the hype would have it. For such a long book it read very easily. There were lyrical descriptions of the land and of events, and the characterizations overall were compelling. I loved how it showed that people are at base strangers to each other, no matter how loved and understood.
I suspect some of my issues were related to the Garnett translation. In addition, I don't know enough about late 19th-century Russia and the recent emacipation of the serfs to appreciate the nuances of the story. However, there were two serious flaws not related to the translation and the setting. Most seriously, I don't think the character of Anna was entirely successful. We are told she's wonderful, magnetic, and so on, but we don't see that. As the story progresses and she becomes neurotic and nasty, it's hard to keep in mind the supposedly transcendent personality that Tolstoy intended to evoke. And while Levin's agricultural witterings might have been more compelling if I had known more about the economic situation, ending the story with his religious epiphany and not with Anna's swan dive was a ridiculous exercise in conceit by the author regarding his Marty Stu.
OK, shoot me.
Seriously, I enjoyed it. I know I liked it more when I read it as an adolescent, which is the age to be reading Victorian novels anyway.
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