Review: Anna Karenina (novel)

Some books are classics because they have memorable characters, intriguing plots, and timeless themes. Others, I'm convinced, are considered classics because they are so boring, such a chore to read, and generally just so awful that someone decided reading them made the reader look smart. Guess which category this falls into.

As with Emma, I found many odd cover designs when looking for one to put here. By far the strangest used a picture of Empress Maria Feodorovna, one of the least Anna-like women imaginable. (I can only assume whoever designed it chose an Imperial Russian picture at random, and in the process made themselves a laughing stock for people who know better.)

Anna Karenina (Анна Каренина in Russian) is an 1878 novel by Leo Tolstoy. It's been adapted into dozens of films, series, stage plays, and even a ballet. I really wish I knew what made it so popular. I would have thought it was the sort of book to lapse into obscurity shortly after being published.

I had no interest in this book until I watched that travesty of a film adaptation. Even afterward I wasn't truly interested in it; I just wanted to see how badly the film had butchered it. Verdict: ...actually, the film didn't butcher it too much after all. The book is just as bad.

Now, I know the Cyrillic alphabet and I can muddle through some basic Russian (with the aid of a dictionary). But reading anything as long and complicated as a novel in Russian is completely beyond me. So I have no idea what sort of writer Tolstoy was. I assume he must have been good or he wouldn't be so lastingly popular. But the translation I read was as interesting as watching paint dry.

There were times when I read only a sentence per hour, and could barely remember what the narrator was nattering on about. Eventually I gave up and skim-read the rest of it. Words cannot describe how mind-numbingly, atrociously dreadful this thing is.

Like so many stories (including, I have to admit, some of the ones I've written), Anna Karenina falls into the trap of having no characters for the reader to like or sympathise with. There are maybe four characters who weren't utterly awful: Karenin, Dolly, Levin, and Kitty. The first two were more pitiable than likable, and the last two got on my nerves with the sheer length of time Tolstoy dedicated to their philosophy. A mark of underwhelming writing is when a character exists just to preach the author's own philosophy, and Levin is that sort of character.

 As for Anna herself and Vronsky, I have only one thing to say: ugh. This book is a study in vile, loathsome characters being portrayed as heroes. I can cope with vile, loathsome characters being portrayed as what they are. A story about such characters can actually be fascinating. (Vanity Fair, anyone?) But when we're supposed to see them as the heroes? Double ugh.

Apparently Tolstoy himself regretted writing this book when he finished it. I share his opinion on that, at least. I just wish he'd regretted it a bit sooner. Before he published it, for example.

Is it available online?: On Gutenberg, if for some reason you want to bore yourself to tears.

Rating: 1/10.