Doctor Zhivago

Rating:
Summary: from Russia with love
Review:
Is it really a love story? Or is it political commentary about Russia in the time of the Revolution? People have argued about this for a long time.

Well, actually its both.

Its a love story set in Russia during the time of the Revolution.

Breaking news! Pasternak is a good enough novelist to write poetically about both topics and he has intertwined them masterfully into a seamless whole.

I don't think Pasternak wants us to separate the love story from the political commentary: the book is deliberately ambiguous.

After all, isn't that life? Our personal affairs are hopelessly mixed up with the realities of world and community events. They cannot be separated. Our lives are shaped to a large extent, although not completely, by what happens in the wider world around us.

But Dr Zhivago is much more than a period romance. Pasternak has also effectively written a sweeping and poetic travelog of his native country.

So, its love story, political commentary, and travelog all rolled into one. Can you handle it?

Sure you can. Go for it!




Rating:
Summary: Best of the Class
Review: "Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves" (Pasternak 68). This deeply philosophical quotation is from, of all things, a love story: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. This book was written in the late 1950s in the USSR when the Cold War was beginning and was outlawed by the Soviets because the government thought that the book supported anti-Communist views. It is a story with an intricate plot, being not only a love story, but a history book and a philosophy tome also.
Though Doctor Zhivago has many subplots, it is not necessarily for everyone. One reviewer says that it is a tad too episodic, and is more of a respected historical fiction book than as a compelling novel (brothersjudd). It is also mentioned as being a political book, but reviews disagree about Pasternak's political views. One reviewer believes that the story is first anti-Communist, as it discusses the destruction of art, then becomes Communist towards the end, when Yurii is optimistic that the change brought by the Soviets will still do good for everyone (brothersjudd). Another reviewer thinks that labeling the story as either party is silly; the book's message is that there is a part of man that politics cannot affect, keeping out politics entirely (The Reporter). This same reviewer wrote that Boris Pasternak is merely writing down an account of the important phase in Russian history that he went through (The Reporter). Obviously, there is more than one level to judge this book on.
Everyone can decide what he or she thinks, but I believe that Doctor Zhivago is not a great novel, but has good attributes. One of these parts is definitely politics. While I can agree with the message as interpreted by one reviewer, I think the book is still political because of the many discussions throughout the book and the horrors experienced or witnessed in the book due to the heartless Soviets. I see it as being mostly anti-Communist, as it describes Soviet exploits in a negative light. Yurii gets parts of his life and his family taken away because of the Soviets, which is horrible. Also, the book has many statements that I could not understand because their meanings were obscure or the people referred to had unrecognizable, not to mention unpronounceable, names. A college philosophy or religion class would be capable of discerning the philosophies, but others cannot. As a whole, I have to agree with the comment that the book is to be respected and that it is important historically, but not that it is casual reading material.
Doctor Zhivago is very complex and works on many levels, just as a great novel should. In its heyday, it was a compelling novel; now, just a classic epic and the best history book I have ever read. However, I have no inclination to read it again until college at the very least. Complex novels are usually the most interesting, but not when they are confusing and too descriptive of unnecessary details, thoughts, and people.

Kate Sanders
Excerpts of book review selected by classmates as the "Best in the Class"
in 9th hour Pre IB World History, Valparaiso High School, Indiana



Rating:
Summary: This is...
Review: ...a stellar translation and the only one to buy. Most cross-linguistic clumsiness is eliminated, leaving only the text's raw grace.

Rating:
Summary: See the movie instead; Pasternak's no Tolstoy!
Review: Absolutely terrible. He should have stuck to writing poetry. If you're interested in the story, see the movie: it's true to the book but is actually organized and coherent.

Rating:
Summary: Zhivago is life and art
Review: Before anyone should decide whether or not Doctor Zhivago is a good book, they must look into themselves and see what it is they are about, what they love, and what affects them. As with any book, there are going to be those who feel that Zhivago is horrible because famous and illustrious novelists (like Mr. Nabokov) did not agree with the approach Pasternak took to writing his novel (but Nabokov also criticized Dostoevsky's books for quite the same reasons, so does this mean that Crime and Punishment and The Idiot and Karamazov are not artistic novels?). Before anyone decides to defer to Nabokov's opinion, he should realize why Nabokov said those things. Reading a Nabokovian book is so much different from Doctor Zhivago. Nabokov's novels are well planned out, with biblical, Shakespearean, and Poe-etical imagery aplenty. His language in general, in every novel, short story, and poem, is spectacular and to be worshipped. His themes dealt with extraordinary events in common life. Nabokov is an artist in the sense of a Renaissance painter.

But Pasternak is not that way, almost quite the opposite. He set out to write a great novel, and I suppose he has done so in many circles of readers. And of those, I am sure that many think the book is great because of the epic events (the revolution), the epic characteristics (the journey), and the eternal themes (love and war, death and separation). But what great book by Tolstoy doesn't have those? What I see with Doctor Zhivago is the way Pasternak treats everyday, common place events. This is the best book, the only book, I have read to take normal events, ones which I see myself going through everyday, and put them into words that are poetic, flowing, and so representative of the truth. The characters may not rival those of Dickens, or the plot may have loopholes and deadends which scream at you HORRIBLE, but those are not the only, or even the most important, characteristics of a novel which defines its greatness.

For this book to be considered art, it shouldn't be looked at with a mathematician's eye, quantifying how many cardboard characters there are, how often Pasternak expounds his own philosophy in similar ways with different characters, or how many times a chapter pops up which is totally different in style and format to the rest of the book and detracts from the novel's flow. Art is not an additive process, but something that occurs inside of the reader, viewer, or listener. And for a book in the last half of the 20th century to create that makes it special, and something to be respected. At least for me. This book has done more inside of me than any other. Not because of its flimsy characters or loose plot arrangement, but because of how it describes life with the poet's simplicity, and creates art from such a simple life.

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: 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: Making love, war and revolution
Review: One of the biggest difficulties a western reader have to overcome when he/she starts reading Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" is to stop trying to figure out how to pronounce those giant strange Russian names and focus on the narrative. Once that is done, the reader has reached half way to succed in reading this book.

Sure the big and unusual names are not the most difficult part of this novel of epic proportions, but when one stops worrying about them, things smooth over. Those Russian names are beautiful, but very difficult to imagine how to pronounce them, and we have a tendency of wanting to pronounce everything --even if it is inside our minds. Forget the names.

Names issue aside, "Doctor Zhivago" is a great book --in more than one sense-- telling the story of love, war and revolution. It is possible to argue that Zhivago and Lara's love story is the central spine of the narrative, while the war and revolution work as background. This concept is too reductive, once both war and revolution have main role in bringing the couple together and them apart.

The three issues are what conduce the narrative. Of course the reader has the expectation of seeing the two lovers interacting together, but they spend so much apart from each other that it is impossible not to start to follow attentively the war and then the revolution. These three aspects take turn in the major focus of the action. And this is one of the aspects that make this novel so multi layered. One can find love, adventure, political ideas and a portrait of life in Russia in the period before and right after the revolution, not to mention, the portrait of the human existence that is in the whole book.

The characters are very well developed and human. The unfolding of the action takes time, and this why the novel may seem to be slow going at times. It is not a fault, but actually Pasternak's style. Contemporary readers may be annoyed, but not the ones who care beautiful and deep narratives. This aspect reminded me of Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain".

To sum up, "Doctor Zhivago" is a very beautiful book, highly recommended. Its story may please those who like adventures, those who prefer love, and those who enjoy political dramas alike.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult, but a worthy read
Review: The events of the novel revolve around a doctor and poet by the name of Yurii Andreievich Zhivago whom we first meet at a crucial point in his life. From the day of his mother's funeral to the day of his own, we follow Zhivago on his travels throughout Russia. He travels to the warfront, flees to Siberia, and is drafted into the Red Army before making his way back to Moscow. Over the course of these two decades, Zhivago repeatedly encounters a beautiful woman who essence fills his thoughts and heart. He is loyal to his wife Tonia and his little son Sasha, but he cannot help falling in love with the lovely Larisa Feodorovna Antipov, who is also already married to a famous war general. It is these chance encounters that allow the plot to progress and lead to their eventual love affair.

Even with such a complex plot, "Doctor Zhivago" remains a primarily character-based novel, as can be seen from the vast number of names and people we become familiar with throughout the story. Even the minor characters become dear to us, once we have figured out who they actually are and how they are connected to the main story. It is a challenging process to sort through the long list of characters, who may have any number of pseudonyms or nicknames along with their original Russian forenames. It is rewarding to recognize that Pavel Pavlovich, Pasha, Antipov, and Strelnikov are, in fact, the same person. We are also given several glimpses into the views and opinions of minor characters. Each person we meet along the way has a detailed history and a certain point of view to establish. Even if a character is only remotely connected to the main plot, Pasternak educates us on his family history and his role in the revolution.

The detail the author includes in the story extends to the scenery and land of Russia itself. With lengthy and occasionally tedious descriptions, Pasternak implores us to imagine the rough and beautiful wilderness of his home land and notes the striking contrast of the destruction caused by the war. He adds to his descriptions by making religious and philosophical allusions. These views alone are interesting but in the context of a greater story that should be told without interruption, they often slow down the more stirring moments in the plot. Some of these images, however, do create a startling picture of the devastation that swept Russia, such as the scenery at the warfront and during the uprising. Others, though educational, disrupt the plot to a greater extent.

With the combination of all these elements, "Doctor Zhivago" tells a compelling story while simultaneously describing the events of the early 1900's that shaped history. But unfortunately, I did not gain as much from reading this novel as many reviewers have expressed. I enjoyed the moments when the plot neatly coincided with Pasternak's poetic descriptions of the countryside or his unnerving depictions of the revolution, but these were too sparse throughout the novel for it to be engaging. The main plot was interrupted too often by philosophic commentary from either the author or one of the characters. It often took a great effort to get through monotonous passages and descriptions that did not contribute effectively to the plot or scenery of the novel. Many have expressed their frustration at the number of long, complex names Pasternak uses to refer to each of his characters, and I would agree that this they are difficult to keep straight. But once I finally understood the names, it was rewarding to get to know the minor characters and learn of their experiences during the revolution. But despite these disappointments in the writing and the excessive commentary on the story, I enjoyed reading the novel's depiction of life during such decisive times in Russia's history. The setting and the characters were equally important in telling the story of Yurii and Lara. Though not a masterpiece in my opinion, it was certainly an interesting novel that was worth the slow read in the end. I must recommend this novel to all those who are interested in a deeply illustrated account of Russian history and an exploration of the themes inherent in that era.

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.