This is not a novel for the faint hearted, but is enormously rewarding. Sometimes described as the greatest novel ever written, Tolstoy charts the lives of three families interlinked by marriage and particularly examines the consequence of intense human experiences: love, passion, hatred, jealousy, anger, melancholy, ambition. The fate of Anna who shuns her husband, Karenin, on falling in love with Count Vronsky, a dashing aristocrat, is given particular scrutiny by Tolstoy, who, with typical, nineteenth century realism, examines the exquisite pain of the mother and wife, ostracised by Russian high society, denied a divorce by her high ranking husband, and access to her son, Sergei.
Yet the novel is not just about the tortured outcome of an illicit love affair. It also asks questions about the very purpose of life in an age in which science had sown doubts about the validity of religious belief. It compares too the superficial and excessive lifestyles of Russia’s ruling and landowning classes with the humble existence of the peasantry and, perhaps unwittingly, anticipates the revolution which Tolstoy did not live to see.
No brief synopsis such as this would be adequate to describe the range of events, the close study of character, or the many reflections on the human condition, with which “Anna Karenina” proliferates. The only answer is to read this great novel for yourselves.
This review is by Mr Gray, Principal at SMC.
Copies are available from the SMC library.
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