I finished Anna Karenina recently (I've also finished Jean Paul Sarte's Age of Reason, J.D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and started Flaubert's Sentimental Education). I love Tolstoy. But I hate Tolstoy endings. All his stories are so wonderful and divine-providence-meets-social-structure-corruption-salvation-damnation-y. Then he ends these magnificent creations with these trite, one-dimensional depictions of the ideal married life...a literary rendition of "Love and mawwiage (and women in the home), love and mawwiage (and Christianity)...go together like a horse and carriage..."

Or maybe I am a crass reader, and Tolstoy's endings have a hidden depth and complexity which I, with my unduly emancipated sensibilities, am totally missing. Feel free to enlighten me.