Anna Karenina

1877, 1988 Bantam Classic edition
Leo Tolstoy, translated by Joel Carmichael
Anna Karenina
Bought new for $3.50
Very tattered paperback, might survive another reading or two.
B+

I first read this novel in high school, maybe four years before this edition came out.  I remember how strange it was for us 1980s Californian teenagers to understand such a different culture, particularly in regards to divorce.  Yet, on reading it now, I find that it's definitely a more familiar world to me than Twain's Missouri.  In fact, that world of gossip and hypocrisy, where a man can sleep around and be cool but a woman who has a love affair is a slut, that world sounds remarkably like high school. 

There's no question that this is an adult novel though, especially with Levin's religious crisis.  He is probably the real main character, as well as being the representative of the author.  This is true even before Anna's suicide.  And yet, it's a novel that's long enough and rich enough that almost everyone becomes the protagonist at least for a moment, even the hunting dogs.  True, the lower classes (from gentry on down) are just lightly sketched, the peasants in particular being "othered."  But Tolstoy does take you into the heads of rivals and estranged spouses, and makes you identify with both sides.  Every act a nobleman or noblewoman would perform, from making tea to going off to war, is represented.

In fact, it can get to be a bit much, when the activities aren't that interesting to me, like hunting.  I admire the realism, but like life, I don't necessarily want to hear every detail.  Similarly, I don't really want to be inside Anna's head when she's tormented by thoughts of jealousy and madness.  In the introduction, Malcolm Cowley points out that Tolstoy's society believed that Anna had to be punished for her sins, but I would've found it more plausible for her and Vronsky to just grow apart.  Their love has always struck me as shallow, particularly since she can't even tell him how much she misses her son. 

This reading, I was most interested in the Oblonskys of the couples.  It's quite clear that after eight or nine children she's lost her looks (although she's still "beautiful"), and he blames her for this, and uses it as an excuse to repeatedly cheat on her.  But I bet he's always been unfaithful because of the type of person he is.  And yet, like the characters, I can't hate him.  Meanwhile, Dolly, whom you'd expect to disapprove of Anna, is actually the best friend Anna has.  Her whole identity is wrapped up in her children, and yet even she thinks they're the worst behaved.  Tolstoy may fall into cliches, as with Kitty at times, and yet part of his realism is an acknowledgment of how complex everyone is.  Well, except for the peasants.