Well. It has taken me a long time, but I've finally waded my way through a Tolstoy novel. (I've tried and failed before.) I don't enjoy him as much as Dostoevsky, but Anna K. is certainly an extremely well-written book, though it seems to me that Levin is as much - if not more - the main character than Anna, or either of the other members of that ill-fated triangle. Anna herself is certainly compelling, and despite my belief that the book is overlong, her slow descent into misery is hideously detailed, and her final chapter is a masterpiece of unravelling. It's a pity, in a way, that the book doesn't end there, but instead there's another 50 odd pages of wrap-up, most of which is Levin, who by this time is clearly acting as a mouthpiece for Tolstoy himself, or so I suspect anyway.

It's difficult not to review this book without the phrase "train wreck" making an ill-judged appearance (all I knew in advance of the plot was Anna's final moments) but regardless of this it was plain from the get-go that it was all going pear-shaped for her, and in this it was like waiting for the inevitable horrible crash. Not a particularly cheerful book, but painfully observed I think.

(Had to add this review again, copied from the original, because there was another record and Goodreads seemed to get only halfway through merging them, whatever. I'm sick of lists telling me I haven't read books when I have.)