This was the third time I read Anna Karenina, and once again I was blown away! Legend has it that Tolstoy started out writing the novel as a cautionary tale against adultery, but ended up falling love with Anna. Certainly she is a compelling and sympathetic character, and her ill-fated romance with Count Vronsky is vividly portrayed. Reading the novel this time around led me to be even more upset about the way that she has no option once she has thrown her lot with him. I won't tell you what happens, because that might spoil the intrigue for you.
And the novel also contains far more--an implicit critique of the weak attempts of reform in Russian society, depiction of Tolstoy's search for the way to live an upright life, and its brilliant first sentence: All families are alike, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. That alone is enough to keep you thinking for days.
As for the writing style: some translations are better than others, but the details Tolstoy chooses to describe his characters and their actions shine through all of them. One of my favourites is the way Tolstoy portrays Vronsky's teeth--always beautiful and white until the end after he has "ruined" Anna when he is wracked by toothache.
In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written.
In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization,…
That is, I couldn't put it down once I got into it. This portrait of a world falling apart because of off-stage political machinations threw me off balance at the beginning. I had to take a second run at it and then I was completely caught up in Lynch's extremely detailed depiction of what it's like to live in a world falling apart. So even though I dreaded every turn in the plot, I read on and on, transported to a world that I hope I will never have to experience. Brilliant writing, right-on details, a tour de force.
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 • NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A prophetic masterpiece." — Ron Charles, Washington Post
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she…
Danny Ramadam is writing in his second language about a world I only know through the whispers of others others. He completely drew me into his life as a gay man born into a society where homosexuality is a taboo and, where independent of that, political forces conspire to destroy decent folk. He is funny and wise and I would love to meet him because he seems such an engaging, person.
A queer Syrian refugee reckons with a life spent out of place.
“Writing this memoir is a betrayal.” So begins this electrifying personal account from Danny Ramadan, a celebrated novelist who has long enjoyed the shield his fiction provides. Now, to tell the story of his life, he must revisit dark corners of his past he’d rather forget and unearth memories of a city he can no longer return to.
Starting with his family’s humble beginnings in Damascus, he takes readers on an epic, border-crossing journey: to the city’s underground network of queer safe homes; to a clandestine party at…
What can we learn about coping with rising sea levels from ancient times?
The scenario we are facing is scary: within a few decades, sea levels around the world may well rise by a metre or more as glaciers and ice caps melt due to climate change. Large parts of our coastal cities will be flooded, the basic outline of our world will be changed, and torrential rains will present their own challenges. But this is not the first time that people have had to cope with threatening waters, because sea levels have been rising for thousands of years, ever since the end of the last Ice Age. Stories told by the Indigenous people in Australia and on the Pacific coast of North America, and those found in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as Roman and Chinese histories all bear witness to just how traumatic these experiences were. The responses to these challenges varied: people adapted by building dikes, canals, and seawalls; by resorting to prayer or magic; and, very often, by moving out of the way of the rushing waters.
Against the Seas explores these stories as well as the various measures being taken today to combat rising waters, focusing on five regions: Indonesia, Shanghai, the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, the Salish Sea, and the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. What happened in the past and what is being tried today may help us in the future and, if nothing else, give us hope that we will survive.
