Re-reading this in the new P-V translation. Tolstoy is the master of uniting the Big and the Small; beautifully detailing inner life, and tying it together with social life and the larger state of the world. He also seems somehow able to put himself in just about anyone’s shoes, writing men, women, aristocrats, peasants, children, even animals with a deft compassion and empathy.

Anna K. has all of these things, and in a more accessible and personal package than War and Peace(which I also love.) I actually like the Levin/Kitty side story a lot better than the doomed Anna/Vronsky love affair, but the novel wouldn’t be as great without both, and the contrast that they set up. In the end, this is a novel about personal growth and evolution, and the myriad pathways: joyful, tragic, and everything in between, that it can take.