This book was quite an endeavor for me, particularly since I began it half-way through grad school. I finished it this summer, and it was entirely worth the wait. Tolstoy paints such an impressive variety of perfectly believable characters whose decisions and actions become so completely intertwined with their essences that by the end of the book you can't imagine it having happened any other way.

The book opens with the famous line, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The book continues on this theme, providing myriad examples of happy and unhappy family situations while maintaining the reader's interest and facilitating the storyline. The characters (Levin in particular) became so dear that by the end of the book, every decision made felt personal and monumentous.

Tolstoy is magnificent, as are Pevear and Volokhonsky.