Rating: 
Summary: An advanced, but worthwhile reading.
Review: For starters I am working on an essay concerning Pasternaks view on art and his life-philosophy. I've read some of the reviews on this masterpiece and must say they are quite ignorant. While it is true that the many names can be confusing, I had a summary of the different names when I read the book (I allways do this when reading russian writers). When looking at it right now, I understand that you get into trouble when reading this book for the first time. For instance, Laras husband is referred to as either Antipov, Pavel, Pasja, Pávlovitj or Strelnikov ... :-) Some of the critics say that the dialogue is unnatural and staggering, but that is not so. It might be abit odd at times, but since I dont speak russian I cannot verify that. However I do say it is not as masterful as Dostojevskij - but then what is? =) The book has many qualities that go beyond the actual events and the dialogue though. And if you take it for the action that takes place this is not a book for you. Pasternak got the nobelprize partly because of this book, and partly for the poems he wrote in the 20s. Czeslav Milosz (Nobelprizewinner 1980) published 1963 a large essay on Pasternak where he in one place compares Pasternak to Mandelstam - not very strange to any reader of russian poetry. Milosz writes "..But he (Mandelstam) had to few weaknesses. He was hard like crystal - and therefore fragile. Pasternak, more spiritual, rough and less demanding, was the one who was to write a novel, that in spite, and thanks to its inherent incongruities is a great book." (Translated from a swedish translation of the polish original text) In the beginning (p.29 in my swedish translation) Pasternak writes "..Jura, his classcomrade the highschoolstudent Gordon and the hostes duaghter Tonja Gromeko. This trippelentity had read "The Meaning of Love" and "The Kreuzer Sonata" too much and was obsessed with the preaching of purity. This quote is essential for the development of the novel. "The Meaning of Love" is a collection of articles by the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev where love is divided into three kinds of love: Social, Spiritual and Physical. Both Lara and Juri has three loves in the book, and I write about this only to let you people in on how deep this actually goes. Pasternaks strength (IMHO) lies in handling a multitude of events, characters and thoughts with the contrapuntal skill of a classic composer handling a symphony. (And he studied music before he took up poetry.) -Vincent Saldell ps Excuse my english - I am a swede =)
Rating: 
Summary: The Russian Revolution is not for me...
Review: This book was by far the hardest book I've ever had to read. The story was too hard to follow, since I kept getting caught up in the words. It's most likely a good story but the character interplay and the sequence of eventS reminded me of a bad soap opera. The affair between the doctor and Lara was just sickening and I couldn't stick with it for long.
Rating: 
Summary: Took way too long to read because of the confusing names
Review: The movie may have won a few Oscars but the book is definitely not much to write home about. There is a great deal of hype out there about this book, but Pasternak's inclination to scrutinize every scene with tedious details and his habit of referring to each character by one of their three names causes one to flip back to the previous pages every five minutes. By the end of the book I was so frustrated that I just finished the book without understanding the significance of half the characters. Pasternak is definitely not in the same class as Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. My suggestion would be to overlook this book and try something much better like Orwell's 1984.
Rating:
Summary: Almost as painful as the war itself.
Review: Doctor Zhivago is an important and courageous chronical of the events, opinions, and atmosphere during the Russian Revolution. The settings are vividly depicted, a broad spectrum of attitudes are recorded, and the basic story is good. Unfortunately, judged as a literary work -- as art -- Doctor Zhivago is really quite bad.
Doctor Zhivago is painfully uninvolving: it evokes almost no emotion and stimulates little interest in the characters. The choice of Zhivago as protagonist is unfortunate as he is the dullest and weakest character of the story. Larisa attaches to Zhivago an elevated "air of...freedom and unconcern" but he is more accurately characterized as submissive and uninspired. Zhivago meanders zombie-like through the extraordinary events that unfold in his life without serious contemplation or introspection. The only time I found Zhivago compelling was when he wrote poetry.
Zhivago is sometimes refered to by critics as "spiritual" but this is a gross misreading of the character. While Zhivago is not pedantically intellectual, he is aesthetic and light rather than spiritual. Zhivago lacks the requisite moral development, conviction, and seriousness to be considered spiritual. Zhivago is spiritual like a hippie is spiritual -- that is to say, he is precisely the opposite.
This book is NOT a love story. While the women in Zhivago's life may have loved him, Zhivago skulks around unencumbered by anything so sublime and powerful as love. His relations are as maudlin and shallow as a prepubescent crush. When a relationship becomes inconvenient he abandons the object of his affection and his efforts to reunite are "lukewarm and half-hearted." Larisa and Strelnikov (Pasha) love each other but their love is never consummated. Tonia loves Zhivago; Marina loves Zhivago; Zhivago is too busy waxing poetic while gawking at puddles, frost, and clouds to be involved.
While Tonia and Strelnikov are more interesting characters, a different choice of protagonist would not help. The fact is that Pasternak is not a gifted writer of prose. He is unable to get inside a character; instead he hovers around at a distance and, with inhuman detachment, simply recounts events. (A great deal of the meaningful dialog is unnatural speeching.) Pasternak violates a simple rule of good fiction -- show, don't tell -- with disastrous results.
Some of the passages in this book are ineffectual or just plain silly. Consider these analogies: "the leafless branches of a wood are thin and poor, like the hairs on an old man's wart" (ugh!) and "Something like the theory of relativity governing the hippodrome of life occured to him, but he became confused...." He was not alone. The more vivid and sometimes poetic descriptions seem overwrought and ponderous when they cannot overcome such glaring and sometimes unintentionally comical weaknesses in the writing.
I shudder to think of the thousands of readers for whom this over-hyped scribbling was an introduction to Russian literature. It is a poor example.
Rating:
Summary: Be willing to spend time understanding this book.
Review: Doctor Zhivago can be a confusing book to understand with it's many characters. It seems like everyone in the book has two or three names that they answer to. There is extensive use of sybolism that remains unexplained or irrelevant in the end, yet if you are willing to spend time going over passages, Doctor Zhivago can be an enjoyable read. "Love story" might be a misnomer for the genre of this book, but if you enjoy a complex frame story with many plot twists, this would be a book for you
Rating: 
Summary: Life changing, life expressing
Review: Dr. Zhivago is a life changing read. Extraordinary in scope Pasternak takes the violent chaos of the Russian revolution and teaches us that to be anything we have to mean something to ourselves and rise above the forces that attempt to even the playing field and destroy what is most precious- our victories and our failures
Rating:
Summary: Superb story of love and life
Review: This is a gripping story about life, love, and the tragedy of war. Yuri Zhivago is a doctor in Russia during the tumultuous times of the Russian Revolution and civil war. Zhivago is both a skilled MD and a compassionate man, both of which are in short supply in war-ravaged Russia. Events separate Zhivago from his wife and children, and at times from his mistress Lara. Like so many others, Zhivago's life is largely controlled by fate and larger events, yet he retains his humanity and love of life. Probably the book's strongest part concerns the love affair played out in an abandoned home during winter - with the civil war never far away. English-speaking readers may need a few pages to warm up to the author's style (including dual names for the characters), but this powerful book is well worth reading.
Author Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) was named 1958 Nobel Prize winner for this stunning effort - an award the Soviet Government ordered him not to accept due to Pasternak's critical look at the Bolshevik Revolution. This is not an easy read at first, but it is an enduring and powerful one.
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: 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: 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.
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