Anna Karenina - Book Review

 “All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.”
                                                                                                

I completed this book a few days ago and quickly felt desperate to write a review but while I was writing it, I realized this is not what I feel for this book. And I decided to give some time to my mind to reassess. So now when I finally collected all my thoughts about this book, here's my review.

Initial Thoughts 

When I picked up this book, I read the the description expecting it to be a classic romantic novel [I didn't read the review]. Considering the size, well, I love fat books. So it was not a big issue.

My Review

My initial thoughts about this book were absolutely wrong. It's not just a book about a woman having an extra-marital affair with a cavalry officer, but it's about the difficulties she faced as its result. It's about the insecurity she felt towards her daughter and towards her husband. I might not be able to pin point all of the issues that it discusses, the list is very big.

The characters are the most remarkable, I'll ever get to know. Every character has a lot of layers and they develop significantly with the book. They are not the most heroic with a resolved and perfect personality. Instead, they are unsettled and doubtful about their decisions. An example of this is how insecure one feels at his/her wedding. And to be honest this is the thing which makes them so relatable. Levin is the most relatable character. He actually is the portrait of Leo Tolstoy himself.

The side characters are not merely side characters. They are not left off, but portrayed well. Their opinions about certain subjects, like farming and politics, are given great importance. 

Talking about the writing style, it's difficult to praise it in just a few paragraphs. In short - it's AMAZING. The feelings of each and every character is very beautifully captured. I especially loved how he gave true, bitter and yet humorous examples to compare the feelings of the characters at certain occasions. 

And at last how can I forget to mention the most famous first line that captures the mind from the very beginning.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

All in all, it's a book everyone should read. Don't be afraid of the size. Take breaks and read a different book if you feel tired [because that's how I was able to complete it]. I could not believe myself that after reading Anna Karenina for more than two months I WANTED MORE OF IT.

Several adaptations have been made of which Anna Karenina [2012] is most recent. Directed by Joe Wright, with Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Matthew Macfadyen.

This book is available for free on Google Books.

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