Yes, it won’t be a book review. But it’ll be more to my nagging about how struggle I was reading this book. So, it will contain some spoilers. For those of you who still want to read this, better close this post right away (and read my other post instead. No, don’t close my blog. lol!)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I think this is one of that book which makes you either really love it or hate it. For me, unfortunately, it’s the latter.
I never felt so struggle reading a classic, or any books, as much as I struggle reading Anna Karenina. I mean, how can you help yourself to not drifting away reading it while the author himself keeps drifting away from the main story? I’m so sorry if there’s anyone of you who’s Tolstoy’s fans. It’s just not my cup of tea.
I got it that considering it was published on 1878 when there weren’t much entertainment, people tend to read to kill their time. Maybe they prefer to read something complicated, something with many characters to be explored deeply. But i think it was too deep i think this book need to change the title to be Levin instead. Haha!
This book is divided into 8 parts. Most of the parts were focus on Anna’s acquittances or families. Or even further, we were getting even closer to Levin, bestfriend of Anna’s brother and getting attached more to his story. Even the first part barely talked about Anna and more to Stiva (the brother) and Levin with their own problems. I thought, “Oh, maybe it’s that kind of story that the main characters will be appeared slightly as a teaser in the beginning. So we can get a hint or a grip of what Anna would be on the next part. They’ll talk about Anna more after this.” I was wrong.
When I said the title needs to be changed to be Levin instead, I meant it. I grew quite attached to his characters tho I actually despise that kind of characters. Jealous and rather stubborn. He’s such a person who has a unique way of thinking. I can say that out of 8 parts, more than half of it was making too much focus on Levin’s life instead of Anna.
I instead grew to hate Anna’s character. (Spoiler alert). In the beginning I felt quite pity towards her. Trying to chase the love of her life and being so vulnerable after leaving everything behind including her only son. But, when she grew being possessive, blinded by nonsense jealous, paranoid about her lover imagined infidelity, fearing her own loss of control, I just wanted to snap her “Girl, it’s your effin’ choice! be adult about it!”. She was so selfish I couldn’t stand about it. Even when she’s dead, I didn’t give too much damn.
To be honest, for the last 30% of the book (that’s about 300+ pages out of 1000ish pages), I skimmed read it. I practically read the page vertically and read only words I only caught. Surprisingly, I still got the plot correctly understood. It’s like proving that the book contained too much unnecessary details that makes it dragging too long. Actually, there are some other topics such as an evaluation of the feudal system that existed in Russia at the time. Not only in the Russian government but also at the level of the individual characters and families, religion, morality, gender and social class. Unfortunately, this topics were just felt like a complimentary.
Don’t get me wrong, not everything in it is bad. Well, I’ve found my fav part in this book. This one single page really describes truthfully what a marriage life could turn out to be. Also, don’t forget that strong opening sentence “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
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