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| Anna Karenina |
Levin’s part
of the story is mostly a gentle affair, as he experiences life ups and downs
while continuously wrestling with deep philosophical questions of right and
wrong, the meaning of existence, and his relationship with his land and the
peasants who work on it. He marries a nice girl and eventually pulls himself
together to provide a happy ending of sorts.
Anna
Karenina’s section is very different. She cheats on her husband, abandons her
child and then finds that the life of an adulteress is not easy in 19th
century Russia. Unable to find any easy answers to her problems she eventually
spirals towards depression, madness and suicide. It would have been easy for
Tolstoy to awaken our sympathy for Anna by making her a better mother, or her
husband an intolerable monster but he avoids going down this route. One of
Anna’s chief grievances against her spouse, for example, is that he has
sticking out ears.
I found
myself warming to Anna less and less as the story progressed, despite her
beauty, intelligence and charm, and it was only in the very last moments of her
life that I found myself suddenly feeling sorry for her – if this was Tolstoy’s
aim he achieves it brilliantly. What he does less well is the ending of the
book, which in my opinion should have closed with Anna’s death. Instead, in a
manner reminiscent of War and Peace, we have to wade through another hundred
pages of philosophical waffle in order to find out what happens to Levin (he
cheers up a bit).
Another
feature which the book shares with Tolstoy’s best known work is the concept of
having multiple characters with the same name. I thought he may have done this
almost by accident with the many Nikolays of War and Peace, but there is no
excuse for giving Anna’s husband and lover the same first name - come on
Tolstoy!
Rating: 7/10
– decent effort with a few flaws
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