Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did not love it. I liked it. I was able to conquer my attention span and read 1,000 pages. That was more enlightening than the book itself. Tolstoy of course - a master. You see him in Levin. You find the most honorable writing in tribute to the Russian peasants. They are like the true heroic figures of this novel. All the society crap Anna was destroyed by. So sad. So predictable and timeless. All countries' societies are the same. How people treat people. Drive some to suicide. Vronsky was very typical in many ways. A typical man with ambition and a sex drive. I hate how he left his horse to die and didn't seem to care. In a way he treated Anna the same. But not on purpose. Unconsciously. The peasants with their scythes clearing the million acres of fields. Laughing. Not caring. Working. Living. Beautiful the way Tolstoy describes them. Levin aspires to live with them before he gets married. Maybe even after. Anna's son and the scene where she returns to see him one final time - this scene is truly magnificent. Tolstoy's gem. The best thing I got from this book was humbled (as a writer). Also delighted. By the tour of Moscow, St Petersburg, and the descriptions of hunting and farming in the Russian countryside.

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