I started reading Anna Karenina several years ago but only got a quarter of the way through. Having now finished the book, despite desperately wanting to like it, I confess that after some initial enjoyment, I started to find it far too boring. There's no refuting Tolstoy's masterful style but his subject matter is sheer realist tedium. The story follows the day to day lives of seven Russian aristocrats all related in some way by marriage or birth. Beautiful, wealthy Anna Arkadyevna has an affair with a younger man, the dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky. Her brother, Stepan Arkadyich is also having an affair, of which he has been recently caught out by his wife, Dolly. Konstantin Dmitrich (Levin) is a miserable bastard modelled on Tolstoy and in love with Kitty Shcherbatsky, who herself is in love with Vronsky. Then there's poor, rich Alexei Alexandrovich, cuckolded husband of Anna who doesn't want to grant a divorce. A plethora of lesser personages are also thrown in to add depth and complexity to the sprawling drama. At some 800 pages, the length of the book is considerable and in my opinion, there is much that could have been omitted.
The two main narratives are Anna's adultery and consequent expulsion from society, and Levin's life in the country with his dissatisfaction and gnawing atheism. Levin's storyline is exasperating beyond expression. His character is hypocritical to the extreme, pessimistic in a boring way, self pitying, moping, irresolute and insanely jealous. The passages on agriculture and the zemstvo made for painfully dull reading and eventually even the love affair and descriptions of Moscow and Petersburg high society grew stale. There isn't a single likeable character in the book, which I suppose shows fidelity to realism, but also results in alienating the reader. The only one I felt any empathy for was Frou-Frou, Vronsky's racehorse who has her back broken during a steeplechase. I didn't care that Anna would never see her son again, or that Dolly's children might grow up bad, and I particularly had no interest in whether Levin would find God - it should have been him jumping under a train. (I almost hate him as much as Robinson Crusoe) The ending seemed to leave several threads hanging, most notably Alexei Alexandrovich's story, of which nothing further is heard.
Rating: 2/5
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