Anna Karenina - Finished at Last

Finally! I finished it. I woke up at 2 AM and couldn't get back to sleep so I started reading. Part 7 wraps up Anna's story and Part 8 is this weird meandering philosophical narrative from Levin's point of view.

Anna ended as it seemed obvious that she would. Honestly, she started to get so tedious with all of her doubts and histrionics. Tolstoy does an excellent job in presenting Anna's point of view as unreliable. At the same time Vronsky comes across as hopelessly childish and lost. I know that they are supposed to be the central tragedy of the book, but I can't help feeling like they are both incredibly naive. If Anna and Vronsky's story was the only thing going on in the novel, I wouldn't have been able to finish it. Many of the side characters I found much more interesting. I really liked Levin and Kitty and I even warmed to Dolly and Oblonsky.

While I feel very satisfied by managing to finish it, I'm a little mystified by the people who proclaim it the best novel ever written. It is quite good but I'm not pulled in by the love story between Anna and Vronsky in any way. Maybe that's not the point of it. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe it is the consequence of being a high school teacher and watching similar love affairs play out over and over. Tolstoy is very good at portraying people with verisimilitude, but perhaps too much so. It made them somewhat predictable. I don't necessarily mind that, but it is what made Anna so irritating. Just once, I really wanted her to make a good decision and stick with it.

Just once.