Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

In case you are wondering if I've fallen off the planet for the past month... No, I have not. I've been working my way through one thousand pages of Anna Karenina. I expected it to be difficult, but I found it much less dense than expected, very engaging, and maybe a new favorite. Apparently I had the "wrong" translation; I found the translation very accessible, but apparently the best one has purple flowers on the front cover.

The novel opens with an glimpse in the house of Stepan Oblonsky and his wife, Dolly, the morning after she has discovered that he was having an affair. These two characters serve to connect the other main couples: Oblonsky's sister, Anna Karenina, and Alexey Vronsky, who is not her husband; and Dolly's sister, Kitty Scherbatsky, and her suitor, Konstantin Levin. These four are the "main" characters, but the novel sweeps through a diverse cast of Russian nobility of the late 1800s.

The novel encompasses at least as many themes as characters, but both themes and characters kept me turning page after page, as Anna reacts to Vronsky as he seduces her; as Anna interacts with her husband as Vronsky seduces her; as Anna raises her son as Vronsky seduces her. They kept me turning pages as Kitty and Levin's relationship grows and blossoms. Passion and love, fidelity and honesty, personal and social responsibility, faith and religion all have their respective places in this novel, along with vast social commentaries on Russian noble and agricultural life at the time.

Two years ago, I wouldn't have made it through the entire novel, but I would have missed out. I highly recommend Anna Karenina to anyone who loves reading... in spite of my sub-par post to describe it.