Dinner With Anna Karenina Review
We met at Lisa's new house for our first ever book club meeting. After having read 'Dinner with Anna Karenina', we were all so excited to start our first book club and excited to get together for a more admirable reason than to just gossip and get drunk on red wine. However, in the end that is still exactly what we did.
'Dinner With Anna Karenina' is a perfect book to begin a book club and we all agreed on this fact. The book was filled with descriptions of each book club meeting night which captivated our feminine sense of style and fashion sense. The group in the book consisted of six women and each would take turn hosting their monthly book club meeting. It was very pretentious in ways that supersede our normal every day lives. Each character was able to take the time to bring some special treat or delicacy, each gift was thoughtfully considered and appropriately given and the women would even create their meals according to the themes of the chosen book. Although these characters go above and beyond what we would normally do in the real world for a book club, this book was able to stimulate our excitement. Everyone showed up for the first book club meeting.....on time.
Other then the fact that this book got everyone in the mood for a book club, not one of us really loved the book. It was too pretentious, unrealistic and it was hard to get connected with the characters. The book starts off with the first book club meeting after the summer hiatus when Cynthia, the woman they all envy, announces that she is leaving her husband but she can not say why. The narration tells us how close these women are to each other and how they know each other so well, but not one woman oversteps the created boundaries and demands of Cynthia the truth. What could have happened for her to leave Eric....what did he do that was so terrible? Over the course of many months and book club meetings they still avoid the topic and only debate what could have happened when Cynthia was not around. This is completely unrealistic. You know that if a woman in our group announced something as wild as this and refused an explanation, the rest of us would not let her leave until she fessed up. I mean, seriously.....we would never be able to stand a secret like that! What a tease.
But of course, you can't put the book down because you must find out what Eric did to make Cynthia leave him. And this leads to another major drawback. You will be severely disappointed when you find out what his horrible mistake was. Was that it? Climax busted.
The story was dull, pretentious and completely unbelievable but the descriptions were great. The author had a way of describing great book club meetings, girlfriend appeal and dinner menus which inspired the lot of us to look forward to the next meeting.
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Hi, I'm Chase Oliver and I'm 32 years old.
