Title:

Author: Louisa May Alcott

Published: Honor Books, 1999, pp. 122.  Originally published 1870s

Genre: Children’s short stories

Blurb: “If someone would only come and take me away!  I’m so tired of living here I don’t think I can bear it much longer,” Patty cries.  Patty’s life in an orphanage is a dark world with little hope, beauty or love.  Even after a family finally does come for Patty, it is only because they need a servant.  But there is one person who does care about Patty.  And soon Patty’s life will never be the same!

When, where and why: I have to confess, I actually bought this for someone else as a Christmas gift.  I don’t usually read books before I give them to people (in fact, I never have before) but then my train home was delayed and I finished my other book and so I had nothing to read!  I was in a state of panic until I remembered that I had this book snuggled safely in a padded envelope in the depths of my bag, heading home to be wrapped.  Desperate times call for desperate measures and so I gave in to necessity and read the book.

What I thought: I firmly believe that any book is better than no book, and that if I were to be marooned on a desert island with nothing to read but a stack of Christine Feehan’s terrible vampire books I would plough gamely through them rather than sit around without a book.  Of course, I wouldn’t be able to hold anything resembling an intelligent conversation with normal people if I were ever rescued (although I would have an impressive collection of euphemisms for genitalia), but that’s besides the point.  Nevertheless, while The Quiet Little Woman, a book of three festive short stories by Louisa May Alcott, filled a bored half hour while stuck in a siding somewhere around Basingstoke, it swiftly transpired that I found it only marginally better than having no book at all, disappointingly.

Anyone approaching this book expecting to read something like Louisa May Alcott’s far more famous Little Women is likely to be equally disappointed, I’m afraid.  I found Little Women to be charming and hearwarming yet, although The Quiet Little Woman and Tilly’s Christmas (the first two stories in the collection) follow a similar narrative trajectory of poor but worthy girls finding love, warmth and happiness through their own selfless actions, they never achieved this end and so came across as rather sanctimonious.  I think this is partly because the stories are too short to allow much character development; the March girls may be good at heart but they all have faults which make them interesting, whereas Tilly and Patty are never anything other than perfect and boring.

Rosa’s Tale is a better story, as it deals with a horse rather than a painfully good child and so the rather hamfisted moral message which so irritated me in the first two stories is thankfully absent.  However, it reads like a paraphrase of Black Beauty rather than an original story and feels rushed.  Having read this book, I don’t think that the short story is Alcott’s medium, or at least it is not one which translates very well for a modern reader with modern expections.  On the whole, I found the collection to be sweet to the point of being sickly and moralistic to the point of being trite.

Where this book goes: This book is winging its way to the person for whom I bought it.  I really hope that they like it more than I did.

Tea talk: As this was a train book, there was no tea to be had.

Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army officer, the elegant Count Vronsky. Desperate to find truth and meaning in her life, she rashly defies the conventions of Russian society and leaves her husband and son to live with her lover. Condemned and ostracized by her peers and prone to fits of jealousy that alienate Vronsky, Anna finds herself unable to escape an increasingly hopeless situation.   Set against this tragic affair is the story of Konstantin Levin, a melancholy landowner whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. While Anna looks for happiness through love, Levin embarks on his own search for spiritual fulfillment through marriage, family, and hard work. Surrounding these two central plot threads are dozens of characters whom Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together, creating a breathtaking tapestry of nineteenth-century Russian society.  (Goodreads Summary)

This book was my first foray into Russian literature, and I could not have had a better introduction. Tolstoy has a way of phrasing the thoughts and feelings of the characters that is so insightful, precise and identifiable that it easily transcends the innumerable differences between a modern reader and the selection of people he focuses on living in nineteenth century Russia. They are all incredibly psychologically developed and I felt as if I knew them all personally and could predict how they might react in any given situation. Tolstoy also colours his narrative so that it is seen through the eyes of the different characters, giving the reader many different viewpoints from which to perceive events and settings and so making the novel very rich. A scene from the perspective of Oblonsky, for example, is light, frivolous and faintly cynical, whereas the same situation seen through Levin’s eyes is thoughtful and earnest.

Unfortunately, while the human drama of the novel has stood the test of time admirably, much of Tolstoy’s social commentary has not fared so well. The sections on social economy, agriculture and political systems may have ben fascinating to a contemporary Russian reader but I found them lengthy, tedious, unnecessary and, dare I say it, dull. However, I’m more than willing to ignore the effect of these passages in light of the sheer brilliance of the rest of the book.

This particular translation (Penguin, 1954, this edition 2000) by Rosemary Edmonds is fantastic. Her prose is readable and appropriate, so that the book does not read like translated literature at all, but like any other nineteenth century novel. The illusion was so well-executed that the only time I was made aware that I wasn’t reading original language literature was when characters discussed which pronouns to use to refer to one another, an aspect of language which is absent from modern English. Both the translation and the original writing make this a thoroughly excellent book.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, translated from the Russian by Rosemary Edmonds.  Published by Penguin, 2005, 853.  Originally published in 1873.

N.B. This is an old review written in 2010 and posted on Goodreads and LibraryThing before I started keeping track of all the books I read here at Old English Rose Reads.  I’ve decided to keep copies here so that this remains a complete record of my reading since I started reviewing books for my own pleasure.