Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy -- didactic and mechanical, but still Tolstoy

I recently read Tolstoy's Resurrection, and I was struck by the didactic tone throughout the book -- Tolstoy is out to educate us. The lively details and insights into character and soul that you come to expect from War and Peace and Anna Karenina are still there, but they are separated by long passages of mechanical narrative. I never felt satisfied with Prince Nekhlyudov. Yet his story, in brief, is compelling -- the prince sits on a jury that mistakenly convicts a prostitute of murder; he recognizes her as the young woman he once had a brief affair with, causing an unwanted pregnancy and thus setting the woman on the downward course of life that led her to her current misfortune; and the prince searches for a way to make it up to her, learning in the process what misery and chaos that prisoners suffer on their way through the Russian justice system. There are many moving and wonderful scenes -- from Nekhlyudov's youth, the Easter liturgy when he was young, with the young girl there, the scenes where wretched prisoners besiege him and plead for his help, the dusty agonizing scenes on the road to Siberia. Despite the book's faults, it's still Tolstoy, and you can't stop reading and admiring.