Anna Karenina Fix - Life Lessons in Russian Literature by Viv Groskup - 2019- 228 Pages

Anna Karenina Fix - Life Lessons in Russian Literature by Viv Groskup - 2019- 228 Pages 

In this marvelous book Viv Groskup shows us how she used lessons she drew from a life time reading of Russian literature to cope with the trials of her life while she became a wiser, happier person using her reading of Russian classics.

The authors featured are Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment), Tolstoy (War and Peace and Anna Karenina), Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mikhail Bulgahov (Groskup is crazy for The Master and Margarita as am I), Turgenev (The drama Three Weeks in the Country which Groskup says helped her cope with an unrequited ill advised romance.  We learn of Turgenev’s long love for a married French Opera Singer) and Anton Chekhov (The drama Three Sisters which is a life lesson in being content with what you can have.)

Groskup makes illuminating use of Isiah Berlin’s notion of the contrast the hedgehog, who knows one very big truth, with the Fox who knows many small ones.  Chekhov is a fox, Doestoevsky a hedge hog.  Tolstoy thought he was a hedgehog but he was really way above these notions.  

Groskup provides fun and interesting bios of the writers.  Chekhov comes across as a genuinely good person, treating the medical needs of the poor for free while writing hundreds of stories  plus his great dramas.  I howled with delight when she said if you are single and love The Master and Margarita and meet someone who loves the book, you should marry them.

This is not an academic work at all.  Groskup explains how she became obsessed with the Russian language and became fluent.  She is very open about her life. This is a very funny book, wise and gentle (with everybody  but herself).

My understanding of the writers she featured was, I think, significantly expanded.  Her chapter on Anna Karenina was very illuminating.  I plan to read soon the dramas by Turgenev and Chekhov she features.  

At the end she includes a recommended reading list in which she suggests translations in some cases and a few secondary works.

“Viv Groskop is a writer, comedian, TV and radio presenter and is the host of the chart-topping podcasts How to Own the Room on women, power and performance; and We Can Rebuild Her, a series of powerful interviews on reinvention, change and resilience, specially designed for the post-pandemic era. She is the author of five books including the best-selling How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking (Transworld). In March 2020 Viv launched Lift as You Climb: Women and the Art of Ambition (Transworld), a companion volume to How to Own the Room. And in June Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature (Abrams) came out, a follow-up to The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature (Penguin). Her first book was a memoir about stand-up comedy: I Laughed, I Cried: How One Woman Took On Stand-Up and Almost Ruined Her Life.” From the author’s website

I have her book on French literature on my Amazon wish list.

One more note, great cover art, in this case you can judge a book by its cover.

Mel Ulm