Rating: 
Summary: Commendable and admirable but ultimately flawed effort
Review: I've been a fan of Pasternak the poet and human being for a long time. His poetry is beautiful, reflecting his deep love of nature and his native land, and I've always found it moving how in 1947 he befriended the then-fourteen-year-old poet Andrey Voznesenskiy after he sent him some of his poetry, mentoring him and treating him like his equal instead of a stupid kid who worshipped the ground he walked on. It's a shame I can't be as big an admirer of Pasternak as a novelist, though this book is a very commendable and admirable effort, and certainly isn't badly-written. The descriptions of nature, for example, are quite beautiful, and it's clear that he loved his native land and was devastated by what befell it following the Revolution.Pasternak was, first and foremost, a very talented and gifted poet, but it's painfully obvious that he didn't have an equal talent for prose. Maybe if he had written other novels his ability in that genre might have improved, but it remains quite obviously a first and only novel. Some of the metaphors, similes, and descriptions he uses are lovely, reflecting his talent as a poet, but some just sound and look laughable and embarrassing when in the form of prose. Some other mistakes are the ones other reviewers have also pointed out-way too much background information on minor characters, no real development of the supposed love story between Yuriy and Lara, let alone on why they got together, no closure of anything at the end, a mostly dead-end and pointless Epilogue and Conclusion (where interesting events begin to be developed but then peter off into nothingness since it's so close to the end there's no time to see them through to their conclusions), characters who disappear for hundreds of pages, too much telling and not enough showing, and way too many coincidences. It's embarrassing how many times Yuriy or someone else bumps back into someone whom we last saw hundreds of pages ago, a truly minor character in most cases, and that chance meeting years later contributes nothing to the plotline. When they finally get together properly, Yuriy spends more time writing poetry after Lara has fallen asleep than in bed with her, this woman he keeps running into for longer and more significant periods of time, whom he realised he was in love with right before he was kidnapped by the partisans who needed a doctor. I get absolutely no sense whatsoever of why these two fall in love, no sense of why they get together, no sense of them being in love period when they're finally a couple. Why do so many writers insist on having the characters fall into one another's arms with barely a word of explaining their feeling or motivations? There are no love scenes, sex scenes, sweet nothings, nothing that would clearly show them as being a couple madly in love and fated to have gotten together years after having first met. The book should have properly ended at the end of Chapter 15, sparing us the pointless Epilogue and Conclusion. Then I wouldn't have felt like "That's it?" at the real end of the book. We don't even find out what happens to Lara's daughter Katya, and for a man who was heartbroken while watching Lara and Katya's sleigh pass his field of vision twice in the night, knowing he'd never see them again, he sure doesn't act like it once he goes home. He doesn't go after his family in Paris, he doesn't try to find Lara, he enters a relationship with his childhood friend Marina! What is that all about? The best part of the book is when Yuriy, Lara, and their friends are all growing up, showing the two different worlds they came from, how Russia was before the Revolution. I still admire Pasternak both as a writer and a human being, but this book remains a nice story that could have been so much more realistic and convincing had it been written by someone with more experience at writing prose.
Rating: 
Summary: The turmoil of the Russian revolution
Review: The manuscript for this novel was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published initially in Europe. The author won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958, but his government denied him permission to accept the prize. The novel is a compelling tale of the events during and after the Russian revolution. People are caught up in events not of their own choosing, over which they have no control. The old order collapses to be replaced by a new order coming out of the revolution. Families are torn apart. Dr. Zhivago is separated from Lara, never to find her again (the motion picture includes the enduring song, "Somewhere, My Love"). One of the scenes that sticks in my mind is a battle where men are ordered to fire on the "enemies," i.e., people opposing the politicians running their side of the struggle. One man simply aims at a tree on the battlefield. Occasionally someone chances to come between him and the tree. He considers it a matter over which he has no control. It is an example of politicians using people as pawns to fight their opponents, the opponents being people who might otherwise have been their friends.
Rating:
Summary: great book !!
Review: This is really a great book. As I understand, when it first came out, it was banned in the Soviet Union and the author was not allowed to go and get his Nobel Prize. I definitely admire Boris Pasternak for his insight and his boldness in writing this book, exposing the defects of Communism. When it came out in 1957-58, Communism was very dominant in the world. What happened in the 1990's - the decline of Communism world-wide and the breakup of the Soviet Union have all vindiicated him. It is really comforting to hear that this book is no longer banned in Russia and that Pasternak's son had been allowed to travel to Stockhom to get the Nobel Prize on his behalf. Truth and justice have finally prevailed. This book should be mandatary reading for young people all over the world.
| 
