Anyways, here are several snippet reviews. Have fun!
Anna Karenina
I've been meaning to read this book forever. It's been placed on a pedestal in the cannon of literature, and I would have felt awfully guilty if I went to see the movie this Christmas and hadn't read the source material for it. To be honest, I should have saved myself the trouble.
Tolstoy's crowning achievement is a sweeping family epic to be sure, following the lives of multiple families whose lives all seem to intertwine. For the first two hundred pages I was swept up in a world of unhappy marriages, illicit affairs, romance and scandal all glossed with the faint chill of Russian Aristocratic society. I would have been happy had the book ended there, with the title character in the throes of her affair and the rest of the characters generally wallowing in misery. Alas, it does not end there.
The novel continues. It goes on and on, bogging down in the middle as Tolstoy explains the plight of the Russian peasant and the varying views on agriculture held in the day. His characters become internal, each locked inside their own heads, barely acknowledging the feelings of others because they are too busy analyzing every moment of their own lives. I fault Tolstoy for creating people that must feel everything in such a catastrophic and melodramatic way. The slightest glance askew from a lady at the table sends a man into an existential crisis, or a fit of melancholy. There is no reality in this attempt to create just that. I will say that Tolstoy gets Anna's characterization spot on. She is unhappy in her marriage, finds a new man who thrills and loves her, but soon finds that even the man of her dreams cannot make her happy. Anna has a quick wit and a confidence about her that I enjoyed, in the beginning. Sadly by the end I'd grown tired of her whining about how she was unhappy despite not making any effort to change her circumstances.Please don't get me wrong. I respect Tolstoy and the great achievement that this novel is. Anyone who can even vaguely carry on a story for at least seven hundred pages deserves some sort of credit. In this case however, there are too many words and I was lost in them as they washed over me. By the end of the novel I didn't even care that a character had thrown themselves under a train. It was one sentence among thousands, and the singular mention of that particular characters fate.
I would be willing to delve deeper into Russian Literature and find out why this characterization of intrinsic thinking seems to be such a theme among authors of that time and place. I like the pursuit of academia. For the lay reader though, I will give you this advice. See the movie. It's most likely combined all the parts of the novel that are exciting into one coherent story and left the Russian peasants for high school history lessons.
Protector of the Small Quartet
Now here are novels that I can get behind. This is another series by my favorite young adult author Tamora Pierce. The four books follow the story of Keladry of Mindelan, the first girl to openly try for her knighthood. The story is set in the familiar medieval and magical world of Tortall and is full of characters who have already had Pierce quartets of their own.
Kel is headstrong and has no magical ability. She succeeds based on her sheer strength of will, which while coming off a bit outrageous when she's eleven, forms a character that women can both relate to and respect as Kel comes of age. Her group of friends are funny, smart and loyal and the novels move along at a good clip, never spending too much time stressing any one particular idea.
I love Tamora Pierce because she writes characters that I would want to be friends with, and Kel is no exception. I'm loathe to go on about this series too much more, because it will only be me fan-girling my way through the entire plot. I'll leave it at this. If you want action, romance, friendship and one bad ass woman making her way in the world, then this is the series for you. I can whip through each of the books in a few hours so it's perfect when you want a quick escape into a world of fantasy where you don't need to think an awful lot to be swept up in the story.
Well if you've stayed with me this far then you are definitely the ones I want reading this last bit. I need you folks to spread the word about me and my blog. I've graduated from college, I"m working on my master's in the summer but right now I'm trying to find a job. Substitute teaching (where I am at this very moment in time) is a rewarding gig right now, but I want to write and share books with people like you. If you know of people looking for writers/editors/someone to read manuscripts and decide what should get published, leave me a message here and tell me about it. I will even reward you with a review of your choice. Or a short story. Or brownies. Take your pick.
One last side note! I know, I can just see you rolling your eyes and closing the page right now, but wait. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month and am about half way through right now. If anyone else is doing this, let's be writing buddies. You can find me under "thinking of the sea"
Cheers!
Hooray for a new post! A shame you didn't enjoy Anna Karenina. I've heard great things about it from other sources. Would you be willing to speculate as to what qualities are attractive to the people who do enjoy it?
ReplyDeleteHallie (Emily Jacke speaking here) -- I am sorry you didn't enjoy Anna Karenina. I had precisely the opposite reaction to it when I read it this summer. I really did not enjoy the title character beyond my first impression of her; I found her predictable, weak and irritating, not the least for being in love with such a douchebag and believing herself so incapable of doing anything about it. Yeah, whiny. The only compelling thing about her is the manner in which she dies, which shocked me and makes me think I was missing something. Levin is, I believe, the true protagonist of this novel; I loved every moment with him, and would have been much happier had he and Kitty been the whole of the book. It seems to me, based on the conversations I have had, that if you are invested in Levin's story and in his philosophy, if you *enjoy* the reaping scene and think it is one of the most beautiful passages in literature, you will like Anna Karenina. If you don't like that part, the book will not make sense/not enjoy the book. Levin is the character who ultimately comes out at the end of the novel as a "whole person," having found spiritual contentment. He is the only character in the novel who persistently sticks to his integrity; he messes up, but he always messes up out of being "too right." In the end it is his domestic and agricultural musings which are the spiritual arc of the novel. I am still not sure why the novel is called Anna Karenina. Ultimately I believe Anna Karenina is a novel about the changing roles and rules of society, about the collapse of an old way of living on the land and in community in favor of new systems of thinking which are bound up in Industrialism. Tolstoy is questioning capitalism, feudalism and what it means to be a responsible, "good" human being. The characters are not real or realistic because he is dealing with values and meanings, not individuals. And it is no accident that it is a train, and not poison, which ends that particular life you mention.
ReplyDeleteEmily, that makes perfect sense! The entire time I was reading I kept thinking, why isn't this book called Levin? His was a story I was more interested in, and I thought Kitty was quite the fun little spit fire. I suppose my disappointment with the book came from expecting a story about Anna and not getting it. I spent the entire novel wondering when her character would complete a proper arch and become the person I wanted her to be.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that the novel is about changing ideas. Perhaps my other problem was that I was looking for a story and instead was presented with a plethora of ideas that overwhelmed me in their need to be understood and thus challenged.
I will say this. The writing is beautiful. I want to study Russian Literature because of this novel, so I didn't escape entirely without impact. I think going forward I now have a better context to read novels like Anna in. Maybe it's time to revisit Crime and Punishment and come up with an opinion not based on my junior year of high school.
Thanks for your response. I'm glad you took the time to read my odd and partially thought out rants.