Anna Karenina

Although I enjoyed the first third of this book, I wound up very disappointed. Considering his opening line:

“

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

”

maybe Tolstoy should have titled the book "Unhappy Families", then he wouldn't have set me up to expect Anna to have something to do with the novel. Instead, she seemed to appear whenever Tolstoy realized he'd forgotten about her.

Tolstoy spent more time developing the character Konstantin Levin, who comes across as a Mary Sue type character, used to discourse on Tolstoy's personal views about politics and religion. At one point in the story, Vronsky serves the same purpose for a discussion on art.

The book itself contains very little conflict. Every fight is resolved without the reader witnessing how it came about, even if the scene played out in the moment. In the middle of a tense scene, he'd skew sideways and philosophize about religion or socialism, neither of which advanced the story.

And I'm still trying to figure out how someone smiles ironically because his characters did it almost every time they spoke to someone. Good thing he told me, because I missed all the irony.