& by 'a week or two' I mean like 50. Also, it is not Tuesday, but -- knowing me -- if I do not get this done while I am thinking about it, I shall probably never get it done. But on to the review:
TL;DR: It's long, but READ IT ANYWAY (the book, that is. Not this review).
Anna Karenina. Although I try & make these reviews as spoiler-free as possible, to truly gush about my copious amounts of feeling that this book brought forth from my soul, there are many many plot points I must reveal. I.e., multiple spoilers ahead for this ~140-year-old work of literature, starting next paragraph. If thou dost not wish the book to spoiled, go & read it. Yes, I know it is frakking huge, but it is well worth the trouble (just don't get too distracted trying to say "Shtcherbatskaya", "Arkadyevna", or *shudder* "Vozdvizhenskoe" out loud). I would not go as far as Dostoyevsky & say it is "flawless as a work of art" -- it did take me a while to get into it & there were a couple parts that seemed to plod unnecessarily -- but I would still highly recommend it to anyone mature enough to deal with the subject matter. It currently sits at #4 out of 73 on my List of Fiction Books Read Since October 1st, 2008, between Frankenstein & Robinson Crusoe (though really anything in my Top 5 could be called 'my favourite book' by me, depending on what mood I am in at the time). Now, let us proceed to the in-depth & spoiler-filled part of the review:
It seems that, much like two of my other favourite books of all time thus far -- namely Moby Dick & Robinson Crusoe -- Anna Karenina is a very long book that, for some reason (methinks tis possibly because they are so long) is usually portrayed as being about one thing. For Moby this thing is Drive, for Crusoe this thing is Survival, & for Anna this thing is Love.
Love certainly plays a central role in the story, in all its forms: the broken love of the Karenins & the blossoming love of the Levins; the missed love of Sergei Ivanovich & the misinterpreted love of Alexei Kirillovich. & Love is certainly a vast & nuanced enough subject that if that was all the ~700 pages touched on (the version I read of the 1901 translation had 736), it would be quite sufficient. But, truly -- at least in my view -- the one thing Anna is about is something else: Life.
Each of the half-dozen or so main characters is fully developed in great detail (is that redundant? I don't think so). The titular Anna Arkadyevna's... shall we say... complex... thought processes, her brother Stepan Arkadyevich's quirksome meddling, Konstantin Dimitrivich's farm-management practices & theories, the rise & fall of both Alexei's sanity (that may be a bit of an exaggeration, to call them insane, but in my view they are either it or close to it by novel's end), Ekaterina Alexandrovna's troubles: all these & more are revealed to the reader, & all of them -- though occasionally seeming tedious -- contribute, in the end, to the great attraction, revulsion, satisfaction, or sadness one feels when the characters' storylines (each in their own good time) take turns for the worse (& occasionally for the better, too).
One of the best things about the book, in my opinion, is the way that Tolstoy simply portrays the characters as they are, each one with some qualities to admire (with the possible exception of Betsy), & some to dislike (with the possible exception of Varenka), & we follow them through their lives & thereby touch upon every subject from love to labour, the education of women, racial superiority, piety, Spiritualism, politics, & more, with just about every single question they discuss just about as relevant to the modern day as it was in the 1870's. (Of course one should expect that a 'timeless classic' would be timeless, but it never ceases to amaze me how, though on the surface early 21st-Century American Culture is radically different from late 19th-Century Russia, but in so many ways we are exactly the same.) It is like going to watch the latest Summer-blockbuster, then realizing halfway through that it is just as much a deep work of philosophy as it is an entertaining work of art.
The final touch of philosophy comes at the closing of the story, which I wish I could say more about, but even though there has been a spoiler warning I feel I must not spoil it at any cost. Suffice to say that it is one of the most well-written & convincing discussions of the Christian Faith since at least G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, perhaps even on the level of Mere Christianity for its clarity & conciseness -- although to really get the full effect, one must read through the whole novel first & become attached to the characters, so I guess the conciseness is kinda negated by that.
I could go on & on even more that I already have, but it has no doubt all already been said by reviewers much better than I in every way. According to Wikipedia, Anna K. is "widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction." I've already mentioned Fyodor Mikhailovich's praise, & TIME magazine declared it "the best novel ever written." Again, I can't say that I would say that, but if one likes literature, one will like this book & should read it -- ideally before getting married.
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