Having just read 'Anna Karenin' and Tolstoy for the first time, I found the ending a big let down, a fizzer, after 'The Idiot' and a few other Dostoevsky novels.
The entire ending, from Anna Karenin's suicide onward, teeters on the moralistic: Tolstoy is subtly preaching at me. The narration and Levin's reflections at the end seem almost arrogant. And I was hoping for the thunderbolt ending of a Dostoevsky novel! (I have also been reading the Australian author Patrick White, with endings as subtle and stunning as Dostoevsky's.)
I had expected Tolstoy’s focus would return to old Karenin, Vronsky, or at least to the unpredictable Kitty, but this was not to be.
I concede that Tolstoy paints Russian society and the predicament of characters in 'Anna Karenin' most elegantly and sympathetically. But am I wrong in seeing a psychological void behind that sumptuous veneer?