Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I’ve tried to read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina a couple times over the last 50 years, but I found the language to be daunting, and it was difficult to keep all the Russian names and nicknames straight. Then, this book was on the list of the New York Times 15 best audio books ever produced, narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal. I decided to give it a try, again. I don’t intend for this review to be a comprehensive comment about this tome, written in the style of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, and the lesser known Vasily Grossman (Life and Fate).

 

The story, 780 pages published in 1878, takes place in Imperial Russia, and in my mind, gives a definitive picture of the highly defective lives of the Russian nobility. Anna, a strikingly beautiful woman, married a respected and powerful statesman, Karenina, but it was a passionless marriage. Seeking love and passion, she began an affair with Count Vronsky which she hoped to lead out her life in love and eternal happiness. But, this is a story of tragedy. There were contrasting figures like Levin and his wife Kitty, who did have a marriage of love. Tolstoy explores the characters in much greater depth than what we are used to seeing in more contemporary novels. The language is dense, and it reminded me of the definition of rococo architecture which features exuberant decoration, lots of curves and counter-curves, and undulations. Rococo is theatrical and intended to impress one on first sight. Certainly the language of Tolstoy fits this definition as he waxes elegantly about the emotions of these characters which shift with each new even in their lives.

 

The Gyllenhall version of the book takes 35 ½ hours to listen, and it was a good companion as I walked my dog in the early morning hours. If this Russian genre interests you at all, I found the audio book with a great narrator to be worth listening to. It is a literature classic.

West Coast Don