JasonKoivu

Anna, oh Anna...what have you done?!

In Anna Karenina there are multiple examples in which one love is fostered at the expense of another. On the one hand the reader clearly sees the wrong being done and rails against it, but if a moment of further reflection is indulged, we wonder if we too might not have done the same. Should true love be grasped at any cost? What price is too high?

However, Tolstoy didn't just write a tragic romance, he had social issues he wanted to discuss...and discuss he did. Interesting? Yes. Especially interesting to Russians at the time? Absolutely. But the length of these diversions is distracting to the main plot and for that reason the whole doesn't feel as flawless a novel as some great novelists claim it to be. Perhaps they're right, but that's subjective opinion.

Melodrama occasionally rears it's head and some have called this nothing but a big old soap opera. Well if that's so maybe I need to start watching some daytime tv.