Anna Karenina

A laborious, thoroughly-explained explanation of what it means to be Russian & how that manifests in the lives of the well-off and the not-so-well. I give it three stars, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. In fact, I very much did. Although I would've preferred for it to be titled something else, or at least for the title character to have more of something to do with it, you realise in the last three-quarters that everything had to do with her. It's not necessarily a book about anything except the sheer magnitude of human energy & that influence on others. The explanations might drag onward into small history lessons, but as someone who likes them, I found the majority of them to be interesting ( although, of course, there were many that weren't. ) Three stars means that I probably won't be giving this a re-read, now that I've finally finished it, but it's something that I will recall & be able to discuss thoroughly. In my opinion, the prose reads a bit like a discussion; whilst things are not left “open-ended”, there are many places where you could easily drift off into conversation with whomever is reading it with you, much like the characters & the narrators drift off. I think Tolstoy does a very good job in reflecting just how stream-of-consciousness human beings are, and how all of us have moments of intense self-introspection. Realistic, lengthy, and arduous.