Anna Karenina

By: Leo Tolstoy

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

Vladimir Nabokov called Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "one of the greatest love stories in world literature." Set in imperial Russia, Anna Karenina is a rich and complex meditation on passionate love and disastrous infidelity.

Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army officer, the elegant Count Vronsky. Desperate to find truth and meaning in her life, she rashly defies the conventions of Russian society and leaves her husband and son to live with her lover. Condemned and ostracized by her peers and prone to fits of jealousy that alienate Vronsky, Anna finds herself unable to escape an increasingly hopeless situation.

Set against this tragic affair is the story of Konstantin Levin, a melancholy landowner whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. While Anna looks for happiness through love, Levin embarks on his own search for spiritual fulfillment through marriage, family, and hard work. Surrounding these two central plot threads are dozens of characters whom Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together, creating a breathtaking tapestry of 19th-century Russian society.

From its famous opening sentence---"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"---to its stunningly tragic conclusion, this enduring tale of marriage and adultery plumbs the very depths of the human soul.

Public Domain (P)2010 Tantor

Not good dramatization but an ok reading

This is one of those "must read" novels because Tolstoy was onto the beginnings of the modern, psychological novel. He creates a wonderful picture of the frothy, frivolous life of Imperial Russian aristocracy and you can see the germs of the Russian Revolution in the political talk among the characters, which is very interesting; the Bolsheviks didn't just jump out of the landscape on October of 1917; the ideas were being discussed long before.

The reading by Lorna Raver, who is generally a very good narrator, has one flaw and that is she tries to dramatize the characters by using a gruff voice to indicate some of the male characters. It sounds utterly stupid. She'd have done better to simply lighten or darken her voice slightly and not try to sound like Papa Bear. It detracts from an otherwise excellent reading.

Masterpiece

Tolstoy was brilliant. His ability to paint a picture with words is nearly unrivaled. Amazing!

get the abridged version

long and tedious with lots of superfluous details that do not move the story along. Really a treatise of Tolstoy ' s philosophy. if you are into philosophy it could be worthwhile.

way too long. "overworte"

What did you like best about Anna Karenina? What did you like least?

the long length. and detail to arguemnts on political and religious ideas and not much time spent on detaiiing what was going on in the story.

this story could have been lots better. the plot was not bad. just the way it was presented.

What did you like best about this story?

that i could listen in audio form. i could never read a book like this. i did enjoy the story,

Which scene was your favorite?

the scene at the ball in the beginning. and the last part when ann was consdering breaking with vronsky (for the thousandth time).

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

yes id would.

Any additional comments?

found anna to be a self absorbed person. i liked levin and dolly and her husband stephen. i found men in this book to be more likable. women to be very frivilous.

Worth the effort

I was ready to poke my eyes out by the end of the second-to-last hour, and if Lorna Raver wasn’t utterly fantastic with the voices I’d have lost who was who along with the will to live. But the final hour made up for the hard slog, and was a fantastic finish to an epic that I look forward to having my kids read and discuss in a few years. By then I might even manage a re-read, simply for the joy of rich material woven into a tale of human nature searching for the meaning of life.