October’s Title Pick for Adults: Anna Karenina by Erin Carlstrom

A few years ago, I was asked to lead a ‘Ways Into…’ session on Anna Karenina. These ‘Ways Into…’ sessions are part of our Support Programme for Reader Leaders who run Shared Reading groups around the country, where we at The Reader can provide encouragement and enticement to try different sorts of literature in their groups.

At first, I was quite daunted by the task, wondering how I could give a taste of this expansive novel in just two hours? I remember the first time I read the novel I didn’t know anything about it, but when I read the first line – ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’ – I was hooked. Here would be a novel that delves into the complexity of relationships and looks under the surface of thing, I thought.  That instinct was correct, but my goodness, I did not know just how expansive that would be.

Remembering that first line, I considered the varying relationships in the novel – husband Alexei and wife Anna, brothers Levin and Nikolai, sisters Dolly and Kitty, parents and children, lovers, friends . . . just to name a few.  And I decided to centre the ‘Ways Into…’ support session, not on the arch of the story, but on the intimate moments between people who mean something important to one another and the struggle to wholly be themselves in moments of relationship – how do we as humans articulate the unhappiness we feel in a marriage? How do we show our care to a sick sibling who won’t face the illness themselves?

It was lovely to explore and feel together during the introductory ‘Ways Into…’ session, but it left me wanting more. I wanted to spend more time wondering about the inner lives of these characters, considering how they resonate and differ from my own. So I picked a couple more extracts to read in my weekly Shared Reading group. This turned into a few months, and then nearly a year, of reading extracts chosen by myself and my co-leader Grace each week.

I’d never read a novel in a Shared Reading group in this way – picking out extracts to skip back and forth across the threads of a story. I don’t know if it would work with all novels, but there was something lovely and fresh about reading Anna Karenina in this way. We let the thread of conversation help guide where and who to go to next.  After reading an extract about Anna as a mother to her daughter, we jumped back to an earlier extract to see Anna as a mother to her son, giving space for us to think about the different ways relationships between parents and children manifest in family.  We jumped around the novel with Levin looking for ways that we resonated (or didn’t) with him when we see in him the city, the country, alone, with a family etc.

One of the things that surprised me most about reading this novel through extracts with the group was the way it offered space for some of the minor characters to take centre stage in a way that I hadn’t appreciated in my own personal reading.  Anna Karenina’s sister-in-law Dolly, for example. Wife, mother and confidant, a helpful presence in the novel – or so I had pegged her in my own reading.  But because of the interest the group members had in Dolly’s world, we followed the thread of her experience closely in the year’s Shared Reading sessions, really giving space to see her concerns individually and not just how they related or worked in connection to the main characters. Dolly was not on my initial list of characters to sit with during the introductory session I led, but now she is dear to me, and I feel a connection to her feelings and troubles in a way I didn’t before. I’m grateful to my Shared Reading group for the care they had when reading about her and that, within the space of the group, we could follow that thread of care.

‘after talking to you, I see it . . . quite differently. I see your agony, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for you!’

- Anna speaking to Dolly (from Anna Karenina)

One of the key parts, or ‘essentials’ in how we practise Shared Reading at The Reader, is the idea that we need to care deeply about what we read in our groups.  My groups experience of reading Anna Karenina made me think about curiosity, and what part that plays in choosing what to read, what to point our deep attention and care towards. What sort of kind and wondering spaces will be made when we follow our questions of curious care?

I hope you’ll give this wonderful novel a go, especially within a Shared Reading group, and find out where your inevitable curiosity and care for the characters will lead you.

By Frances Macmillan, Literature Engagement Lead