Impressions of Anna Karenina

It is a few months now since I read Anna Karenina, and I have been putting off writing about it. It was a book that I am very glad I read but when I had just finished it, there was too much of it in my head to be able to articulate it on e-paper. So I decided to let it sit for a while and then see what impressions I retained of it after a while. Books tend to slip from my mind like water through a sieve, and for a book to stay with me for more than a few weeks it has to be special.

And so - Anna Karenina is special. Despite the length of time I can still recall many incidents in this huge book and so much of the feel of it, when I am sure that six months after reading War and Peace I had little left but a confused notion of French troops shivering in Russian snow. For me, Anna Karenina is Tolstoy's masterpiece. Its focus is domestic: it concentrates on relationships, how they can develop differently and the emotions that people go through, and for this reason it is universal. The emotions are human and recognisable, and although the focus is on a small number of characters, it feels broad, as though it has taken in all people.

One chapter stood out above all others for me, one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read. It described one of the character's emotions as he waits for his wife to give birth; he is dazed, afraid, and feels pushed and pulled about by the other people dealing with the birth. He fears that terrible things are happening but people are hiding it from him, and cannot make sense of any of it until the wonderful moment when his child is born.

Politics are still present in the book, as one character attempts to find an answer to the problem of serfdom in nineteenth century Russia and with the benefit of hindsight, as often happens with literature from this period, it is easy to see how this country ended in revolution a few decades later. However, these points seem unimportant compared to the examination of people, people struggling to make sense of life, dealing with love and hurt, developing emotionally and sometimes finding life positive, sometimes suffocating.

I won't give you a precis of the story, partly because it would probably sound like a second rate soap opera if the events were detailed with all the adultery and hysterics; in a lesser writer's hands it could easily have turned into melodrama. I'll just say, if you haven't read this please do.