To think that Anna Karenina would have been less unhappy if she hadn't fallen in love with Vronsky?

[SwedesInACape]

I think everyone who has embarked upon/is thinking of embarking upon/is a bit bored with their husband or partner should read the book or at the very least watch the film. All that pain.

I know a couple who are the two least creative people I know. They live their lives sort of afraid of life . They are paralysed by indeicision on even minor matters, and they are so negative. They are well-meaning in so many ways but I find them intensely irritating and terribly draining. I often feel they would be much happier if they had found someone not quite so joyless.

I've never read it

Do I need to read it

MP, yes.

thankyou Merrymadmarg - i still dont gt why my copy is called Anna Karenin?

I haven't read it but watched it on tv the other day. Also had a conversation with a mnetter the next day about affairs and mentioned it.

It didn't seem worth it in that instance, there was just so much pain involved. They weren't exactly discreet were they.

Did she have his baby in the book then?

YANBU

NotanOtter - I'm only guessing but I think some modern translations forego the name-changing and just stick with the one-surname-for-all.
War and Peace used to be famous for all the name-changes, I think they also keep some surnames and add other ones on upon marriage. My Uncle warned me a flow-chart would be necessary when I started reading it. I think my version was modern, though, and the surnames stayed put.

Threadworm - I like that idea. I did wonder though, how would you know? Whether you were a bad writer/embarking on a pointless affair, rather than a genius who's audience does not yet have ears for them/embarking on an affair with the One?

(I'm interested in that partly because I once did a creative writing course and it hit me that I had no clue whether I was good/bad at writing.)

Do you think it would have been more shocking if they had embarked on their affairs, wrecked all those lives and it had been somehow implied that actually, they were right to do it?

thankyou zen

I thought I read in the preface to my AK that it is actually incorrect to feminise the surname -- it is actually just the patronym(?)(middle bit) that takes the masculine or feminine form. The feminised 'Karenina' is wrong.

(But I might be utterly misremembering.)