Reading Rambles: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I enjoyed this book, but mostly it was meh. It took me eight months to read this book, and six months of that was on the first half (my copy is 800 pages). I read it more quickly after the halfway part not necessarily because it was more interesting, but because I was finally halfway through and I really just wanted to finish it before 2020 ended. I almost always feel like books this long could have been much shorter. Not a lot even happens, when you look at how long it is.

The best part of this book was its portrayal of self-sabotage and existential dread. (Also the homosexual undertones within many characters! Did anyone else ship Kitty and Varenka when Kitty was on that retreat or whatever in part 2???) When Tolstoy said of Anna, "even though she knew it was her own ruin, she could not restrain herself, could not keep herself from proving to him that he was wrong" (part 7, chapter 24), I felt that. There are a lot of intense truths that I adore in this book. Idea-wise, I really loved reading Anna Karenina. It's nice to read about others' existential dread sometimes, instead of just wallowing in my own.

Plot-wise, though, I was so frustrated. It was so dull and dragged on and on. And I felt that the characters all had the same issues, just in different flavors. Which I suppose is true to life, I just wish the flavors were more distinct to keep things interesting. In that vein, the characters were all extremely similar and there were so many of them. I feel that it could have focused on less characters and gotten the same story and message across... in less pages.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I'm not sure I would read it again. Maybe I'll try watching the movie with Keira Knightley.

---

Rachel’s Rating: ★★★☆☆