This ‘Anna Karenina’ has overlooked virtues. Not least that it is true to Tolstoy

In a famous passage in Persuasion, Anne Elliot tells a sentimental sailor to mend his reading habits, hoping he does not read only poetry – a form “seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely” – and recommending such prose works of the best moralists as were “calculated to rouse and fortify the mind”.