What Happened to Anna K.

Karen White brings sensitivity to Irina Reyn's modern retelling of ANNA KARENINA. Her empathy is helpful--as protagonist Anna K. can be as infuriating as Tolstoy's original. Amid the Russian-Jewish community of current New York, Anna K. attempts to enliven her life with an affair that threatens to destroy those around her. For the most part, the plot works well. White has a cool, pleasant tone that helps calm the over-the-top emotions of the story, and she reads crisply, moving the story along. One wishes that she had a greater vocal range, as her pitch is rather high throughout. Nonetheless, this is a dramatic, emotional, and well-read book. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

June 2, 2008
Set among early 21st-century Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City, Reyn's debut beautifully adapts Anna Karenina
's social melodrama for a decidedly different set of Russians. Anna, 30-something with a string of bad relationships behind her and a restless, literarily inclined soul, is wooed into marriage by the financial stability and social appropriateness of Alex K., an older businessman with roots in her Rego Park, Queens, community. As Anna chafes at her unromantic life, trouble hits in the form of David, the hipster-writer boyfriend of her sweet, naïve cousin, Katia. The furiously flying sparks between Anna and David provide cover as Katia is quietly pursued by Lev, a young Bukharan Jew who, like Anna, is a dreamer whose relationship with the émigré community is fraught. Reyn's Anna is perhaps even harder to sympathize with than Tolstoy's original, but Reyn's sparkling insight into the Russian and Bukharan Jewish communities, and the mesmerizing intensity of her prose, make this debut a worthy remake. Lev's and Anna's divergent trajectories and choices illuminate how perilous the balance between self and society remains.