My second book of the year was Anna Karenina (a re-read) and it is the perfect winter story. Though the novel spans all seasons, Russia’s soul always feels like winter to me—harsh, inescapable, a little raw and messy, but undeniably beautiful.

Anna Karenina is sort of like reality TV for people who don’t like reality TV. It has all the elements: the high-society scandals, the shifting alliances, the "he-said-she-said" of the dinner-party circuit, and the slow-motion train wreck of a public affair. But instead of manufactured drama, Tolstoy gives us the raw, unedited footage of the human heart. Gossip, but deeper.

Tolstoy builds a world in which you feel like a participant in the lives (and inner lives) of the characters. We live amongst them, oscillating between anger, guilt, horror, reflection, and joy. It’s always a delight to be fully immersed in a story, but there is a specific magic in traveling to a time and place (19th-century Russia) that bears so little superficial resemblance to our own, only to find that the people are still doing and thinking the things humanity has always done and thought.

How is it that the world can change so dramatically, but people are still burdened by the same troubles and delighted by the same joys? Unchanged at our core.

Tolstoy weaves the social and philosophical problems of his day into the very fabric of the narrative, but at its heart, this is a story about the love and fates of the characters who repeatedly encountering the realities of life. It is the perfect illustration of that old adage “wherever you go, there you are.” 

To read this book  is to ask oneself: What does it mean to meet life head-on? Is it to live by the whims of our hearts? By reason alone? Is it to be present? To refuse to deceive oneself?

My rating: 8/10

(I read the Maud & Maud translation)