Rating: 
Summary: Overrated, but still a classic
Review: Dr. Zhivago is one of those rare stories with a main character that is marred in several ways. Fluctuating in philosophy and love, Yury is frustrating yet captiving. So is the novel. The details, the way Boris describes the first night Yury and Tonya fell in love was brilliant. His message of pacifism is made obvious, too much so in my opinion, and the poetry of Dr. Zhivago allows the reader a great insight into his mind. However, I found the ending flat. After Tonya flees, it seemed to drag on too long before the book actually reaches closure. I loved the first four hundred pages, but went through the last hundred by sheer will. This book is considered a classic and is very fitting of such a category. It's detail, it's splendor, it's tales of Russian history are unparallaled, but the ending is very anti-climatic and leaves somewhat of a bitter taste after an otherwise beautiful literary work
Rating: 
Summary: THE LAST CHAPTER
Review: I read and re-read this book during my course and I didn't like at first but later I fell in love with poetry of Zhivago(Pasternak) which is the centre of the book.Seems so hermetic and far from the plot and yet it explains it perfectly.Every rhyme is an echo of lines in the novel and it has so many levels of reading and interpretation that you just can't but explore them from day to day.His poetry is incredibly rich both in human and evangelic direction.To be read in Russian otherwise translation takes everything away.I really do recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Doctor Zhivago
Review: Doctor Zhivago is a beautiful book about life, love, war and peace set during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The novel follows the intertwined lives of Yurii Andreievich Zhivago and Larisa Feodorovna Antipova as well as tracing the course of the civil war/Bolshevik revolution. By the end of the book I truly cared for Yurii and Lara. Dr Z is a great love story and also an educational book about Russian history and culture in general. The first 150 pages are rather slow reading and the long names are at first impossible to keep straight, but stick with this book. It'll be worth it. ( I would rate this book 4 and a half stars if possible-half a star less than perfect because of the confusion over names)
Rating:
Summary: The D.H. Lawrence of Russia
Review: Actually, making that comment insults Pasternak beyond belief. While DZ is sometimes fantastically rich in its imagery, it rarely evokes much emotion for the contrived characters; (...) I have never read a more beautiful nature description than the "spring passage" in all of Russian literature this century. Pasternak is obviously a talented writer, but the long treatises on the place of Jews, the messages of Jesus (and so on and so forth), are just forced and too abstractly intellectual to take a natural place in any prose, much less a text which is already sorely lacking in 'real' people in the first place. A great book, but falling far short on certain fronts.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Love Story of the Russian Revolution!
Review: The story of one man's struggle to love two women set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolutiion. To quote Omar Sharif, "Once you get past the first hundred pages and figure out all of the names," it's a great book!
Rating:
Summary: A Book To Read and Re-Read
Review: This book may be confusing, but the author never intended this to be a straightforward novel about life...he was indeed trying to capure life in all it's spontaneity with imperfect characters amid the turmoil of the Russian Revolution...Pasternak is not attempting to paint a full canvas here but providing us with sketches that try to capture scenes from life much the way poetry does...there is something almost mystical about the book...certian details about the passing world described around the endearing yet weak characters...I also recommend "My Sister Life" which is a collection of Pasternak's poems...which will show you that perhaps Pasternak is at heart a poet...who wrote this remarkable book
Rating:
Summary: The best book about Russian revolution!
Review: I really mean it! It is the best book ever written about that dark period of time. At last I found a novel that shows not only Lenin and his helpers but ordinary people(not heros!), their lives and sufferings during the Great Revolution. Five stars. If I could, I'd give it six! Really, a masterpiece of Pasternak. Unfortunately, there isn't any other novel written by him.
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: Really confusing story
Review: I had always wanted to read this book, when I did I was very disappointed. I thought that the book was very confusing and I couldn't sit down very long reading this book before falling asleep, even if it was in the middle of the day. Lara made me sick, I couldn't stand her. I felt sorry for the entire Zhivago family. There were a few parts in the book that were good, but not many. If you want to have a good nap in the middle of the day read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Doctor Zhivago is passionate and is a poetic genius.
Review: Doctor Zhivago is so much more than what words can express. A love so strong, a war so wrong and a poet of deep passion. Discriptive words from Pasternak opens your mind to a world of greatness and sadness.
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