Title: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Written: 1878
Pages: 747 Pages
Structure: 7 “parts”, each split into about 30 chapters.
“Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy is an overwhelming novel with huge themes. I feel dwarfed by it and can’t possibly do it justice by sharing my small thoughts.
I was surprised. Despite its size (750 pages), this book was easier to read than I anticipated. The language is not complicated. As I read it, I felt like I could see into the minds of the characters, and hear their thoughts, which helped me understand why they acted they way they did.
The author lets you see the world through the eyes of a number of different characters, even from a hunting dog’s perspective. This makes it realistic – I felt like I was living in 19th century Tsarist Russia.
But it raises some tough questions. How do we deal with suffering, passion, betrayal and rejection?
What does it mean to live a meaningful life?
How do we respond when we get what we want then realise it’s not what we expected?
And how do we live, knowing that eventually we will die?
The book had me gasping with astonishment at some places with the shocking twists and turns of plot.
A couple of good quotes:
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
“In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.”
“my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”
It’s a great book. I have only scratched the surface, but I am glad I had the chance to read it and gain a new perspective of what it means to be human.