There is little to nothing I can say about Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' that hasn't been said over the past hundred plus years since it was published. When I finished the book and decided it would be the first one I write about I was instantly stumped. Searching for inspiration, I read the introduction (which I never do for fiction books because they tend to have spoilers) and had a breakthrough. In the preface to the novel, John Bayley writes, “All the characters in Anna Karenina are intensely real.” For me, that was the most riveting and satisfying part of reading this book. I'm not a Russian aristocrat in 1800s Russia but I still felt like I knew these characters and even saw some people I know in a few characters. I am friends with women as beautiful as Anna Karenina and Kitty, who men easily lose themselves in and fight over. I have felt Levin's devotion to a pursuit for love and his disappointment when that person has feelings for someone else.
The most intense parallel I experienced between a character in the book and a person in my own life was between my eldest brother Chris and the character Levin, after his marriage to Kitty and the birth of their child. In the novel we're introduced to Levin as a socially concious land-owner who despises politics and is particularly passionate about reforming the current system of farming in Russia. In Part 5 of the novel he gets married and focuses his time and energy on providing for his family. Eventually he becomes preoccupied with financial worries and societal obligations. This is a major concern for all of the novel's main characters and is one of the novel's prominent themes. Levin eventually feels a void in his life and on the verge of suicide begins asking himself questions about the meaning of life. After much reflection Levin finds purpose and happiness in Christianity which he had been surrounded by his whole life but shrugged off in favour of intellectual and philosophical pursuits.
Minus the desperation and suicidal thoughts, this is almost the same thing that happened to Chris. He got married, bought a small business and then he and his wife had a child. Around this time Chris became concerned with the issue of morality and how to raise his son to be a good and happy human being. Like Levin, my brother and I were raised by Christian parents and in a predominantly Christian community. Taking a more in-depth look at the bible and Christian values seemed like the logical next step for Chris. He has since decided to begin the process of becoming a minister in the Presbyterian church (a more drastic reaction than Levin,of course, but the circumstances leading to this decision is what contains the imporant similarities).
In the words of Richard Pevear, co-translator and author of the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition I read, “Anna Karenina introduces us to the most ordinary Russian aristocrats of the 1870s, concerned with the most ordinary issues of the day, behaving in the most ordinary ways, experiencing the most ordinary joys and sorrows.” I think that's what makes this novel so relatable to the life of anyone reading it and is definitely what I loved most about it.
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