Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

What an epic book by the Russian master of literature.  I was led into reading this book via another, very beautiful book called The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, which my friend Jules lent to me.  In that particular book the narrator of the story is a French conceirge who hides her intelligence from her employers, as she wants to keep her pleasures to herself and does not want to risk being mocked by others.  In the story the concierge's cat is called Leo, after Leo Tolstoy, and the conceirge has a passion for the story Anna Karenina.  That affection for Anna Karenina led me to want to read the book for myself.

The depiction of Tsarist Russian life is very vivid and so novel to me that I found it very captivating to read about the likes of Princess Catherine Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina and Dmitrich Constantine Levin.  One small thing that was an eye-opener for me was how the characters often called each other by shortened, pet names (Kitty for Catherine, Kostya for Constantine etc.) and then would switch to their full names (including middle names), depending on the situation they were in, a type of complicated etiquette where I would find it impossible to remember everyone's middle names!

That aside it was the character Levin's struggle to reconcile his own actions and purpose in life that I found the most compelling.  He spends much of the novel trying to find the meaning of his actions and those of the people around him.  He finds the social expectations, etiquette and manners of Russian high society extremely difficult to deal with and doubts the rationale for the pomp and rituals of society and the depth of character of those around him who submit to it so easily.  One scene where he is expected by his wife to 'call' upon an acquaintance as 'everyone does it', is particularly well described in it's excruciating uncomfortableness.  Levin turns from extraditing himself in the countryside, where he feels he can be himself, to throwing himself headlong into society and finding that he can enjoy it so long as he doesn't think about it, to swinging back again to an unsatisfactory middle ground.

The book is beautifully written, but at times, for me, Tolstoy goes into too much detail, for example over local beaurocratic meetings (Tolstoy had a gripe with the workings of Russian beaurocracy), but these passages can be skipped over quite easily and may offer other insights to other readers; who am I to judge!

If you haven't read this book, I would recommend it to you, the characters are brought to life around you and although you may find many unpleasant and shallow, it is interesting to view the world through their thoughts and actions, which are often confusing even to themselves.

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 (it would have been higher, had it been a bit more concise)