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Long ago, before "Oprahized" was an adjective in the book-selling community, I read this book about a Russian Lady (used to be a bar in Hartford) who had this unhappy marriage -- and an unhealthy thing for trains. It was all high drama and such, but I was most taken with the parallel plot about a guy named Levin, based loosely on Tolstoy himself.
I thought, "Thank god Anna's story is Levin-ed with Tolstoy's fictional one, because this guy thinks a lot like I do -- scary as that sounds." Some lov ...more
I thought, "Thank god Anna's story is Levin-ed with Tolstoy's fictional one, because this guy thinks a lot like I do -- scary as that sounds." Some lov ...more
What can I say that hasn't already been said? Brilliant, sweeping, layered, and challenging questions on morality/self autonomy. Read it. It's worth it.
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I just revisited this book and still have to give it a 5 star rating. I read another reader's opinion of the book about how Tolstoy's tangents made it a hard read, but that's what I loved about it . It felt real to me. It seemed like he was telling a sory about actual events and real people because they had honest struggles and dealt with normal stuff .
It is long, but it's long so that you can know each of the characters intimately (not in the Biblical sense of the word, of course). ...more
It is long, but it's long so that you can know each of the characters intimately (not in the Biblical sense of the word, of course). ...more
Am so glad I reread this wonderful book. I think I got so much more from it this time than when I read it 30 some-odd years ago. It's all here -- love, hate, birth, death, betrayal, loyalty. Tolstoy has such a clear and sharp eye for the human condition. In a few months, I'll tackle "War and Peace."
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Tolstoy certainly bit off a lot here, and it's interesting to me to think about just how much he would not have been allowed to get away with this today - I can picture huge swaths of this book with an editor's red line through it. Some of the minutia here is tough slugging and the characters can be frustrating in their clear need for that newfangled psychoanalysis, but it's still probably one of the best depictions of the era in Russia.
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Not a fan.
Apr 04, 2008
Jenna
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
classics-russian-literature
Apr 15, 2010
Lauren⁷ 💜
marked it as to-read
