Anna Karenina

I couldn’t put Anna Karenina down. This is truly one of the great classics of literature, and for good reason. At its core, it explores a woman's position in a hypocritical, patriarchal society, but it’s also a story about men, human relationships, and love—both its power to heal and to hurt. Ultimately, it digs into the motivations behind human behavior. First published in 1878, Anna Karenina still has the power to challenge many modern conventional ways of thinking.

Leo Tolstoy’s follow-up project to the massive War and Peace explores the meaning of human existence and the interplay of socio-political events and individual free will through the medium of infatuation, marriage, and love.

It’s also a real page-turner. When she finished it, Elisabeth Elliot called it the greatest book she had ever read, writing that Anna Karenina’s character had held a mirror up to her soul and showed her what her own heart was capable of. 

I had read it once before, but too fast. This time I read it slowly. Its great gift is to show you multiple perspectives - to get into the minds and hearts of so many people and see how they interact, and the writing is extraordinary, setpiece after setpiece. The great risk for the world right now is peoples' inability to see things from multiple perspectives, to be trapped in their bubbles. Great novels liberate us from the prison of our own minds and views and I really think there is no greater novel than Anna Karenina.

In a list of Top Ten Novels Ever Written, ANNA KARENINA has to be in there. Tolstoy's compassionate insight into the human condition, our inner thoughts and motivations, is unmatched. And he gets women! Yes, the Levin parts about politics or improving farming techniques get boring, but everything else is so, so compelling.

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.… show more.

The literary gamut is filled with shamed women from across the ages; but Tolstoy’s poor doomed heroine, Anna Karenina, who is so tormented by public humiliation following an affair with Count Alexei that she famously throws herself in front of a train, is perhaps one of the better known tales.

One has to wonder why, across the centuries, only women are scorned for getting involved with the wrong guy. If it’s an issue of morality, then the man should get thrown under the bus too; and yet, generally, they’re not, and the men in this novel just went on with… show more.

Well, perhaps her name isn’t unfamiliar anymore, and it wasn’t historical fiction when it was written. But this luscious, complex, and moving classic is about more than the titular Anna and her ill-fated romance. For me, the best parts were about Levin and his longing for a simpler life.

Maybe I’m projecting, but when compared with Moscow society's social climbing and deep disillusionment, it’s hard not to want to turn away and opt for an admittedly idealized simple life working the soil. Yes, I know it’s long, but it’s well worth reading—or rereading!

I mean, hello! The opening sentence “All happy families are alike…” is probably my favorite opening sentence of all time. This book is what I place in the “epic story telling” category for its breadth and scope of time. In many ways it is the story of two separate families and it hits on several themes I have come to crave and demand from art. Tolstoy looks at class, cultural and societal norms, and the emotional toll of familial expectations. It is a book so dense with interesting, flawed characters and it is one of the rare works I come… show more.

While this mammoth work by Tolstoy has various plot threads, the one involving the title character is perhaps its most thorough and tragic, as Anna (a wife and mother) struggles in her marriage and embarks on an affair, only to find it no more gratifying and ultimately only serves to question her very purpose. The book is a thoughtful meditation on what so many of us live for and what recourse there is when our aspirations are shattered.

This icon of Russian literature presents an unflinching look at the human heart as it navigates its deepest passions while flung about by the currents of high society. Every aspect is used to its fullest potential, including the fashions which are as ravishing as they are symbolic. The heart is fickle but it has one constant: the need for a good outfit!