I quite enjoyed this, although it took ages to get going (around page 300!?).
One of my problems was that none of the characters were, initially, very interesting, although the plot forced a bit of interest out of them. Anna seemed to be just s flirt, her husband a bore, Vronsky shallow and the only character who interested me much was Levin, who, I gather is a loose self portrait. But even Levin could be pretty tedious - his doubts made him interesting but the subject of his doubts (how to mow a field, Russians peasants) less so.
Tolstoy was a bit of an intellectual omnivore, but couldn’t be interesting about every subject that interested him, as the final and interminable pages of 'War & Peace' demonstrated. But a big book and not one on my list for the year.
Bought in Lymington in October 1976, paper cover now falling off.
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