"tragedy"

1878 · Leo Tolstoy · 964 pages · Literary Fiction

Anna Karenina is the novel that Tolstoy himself called his first true novel, and you can feel the difference between this and everything that came before it. The dual structure of Anna's tragic affair and Levin's quieter search for meaning creates a book that is simultaneously a devastating love story and a philosophical investigation into how people should live. The Levin chapters will divide readers as sharply now as they did in the 1870s. But Anna's psychological unraveling is rendered with a precision that remains unmatched in fiction, and the opening line's promise that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way turns out to be the organizing principle of one of the richest novels ever written.

2021 · Steven Spielberg · 156 min · Musical / Drama / Crime

West Side Story is Spielberg proving that the musical, as a cinematic form, still has the power to overwhelm. The dance sequences are some of the finest ever filmed, Ariana DeBose owns the screen as Anita, and the technical filmmaking is breathtaking from first frame to last. The central romance remains the weakest structural element, inherited from the source material rather than introduced by this version. But as a piece of pure cinema, choreographed and shot with a passion that borders on obsessive, it's a stunning achievement.

1925 · F. Scott Fitzgerald · 208 pages · Literary Fiction

A hundred years after publication, The Great Gatsby still starts arguments. Its prose remains stunning, the symbolism rewards every reread, and its portrait of ambition rotting behind a beautiful facade hasn't lost a step. Characters are hollow on purpose and the plot is thin by design, but that doesn't change the fact that some readers will bounce right off both. It's a book that asks you to care about people who don't deserve it, set against a version of America that hasn't really gone away. That tension is exactly why it endures.