Even though I finished this book today, it could have been last year with how much I remember. I'm not sure why I couldn't get into it. I felt lost with a lot of the White vs Red part. It all seemed so chaotic. Probably the point as it was chaos. I felt very lost by most of the historical background, more my fault as the reader I guess. I've never seen the movie, but I've heard it is one of the great romantic film. I didn't expect the famous romance of Lara and Zhivago to be an affair. Kind of turned me away from liking them as he started the relationship while his wife was pregnant. ( )

1022 Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak translated from the Russian by Max Hayward and Manya Harari (read 15 Sep 1969) I have slogged through this book, and cannot say the experience was not what it should be. Of course Pasternak is a great composer of images, but as a story I cannot be impressed. a great hero-lover who has three women seems to my Puritanical soul not to make much sense. Having seen the movie did not help me to enjoy the book, since the uncertainty as to what would happen was gone. ( )

Boris Pasternak's masterpiece about love and death in the years preceding and during the Russian Revolution, in many ways this reminds me of "Gone With the Wind". Yurii Zhivago is a well-born doctor, married to the refined Tonia Gromeko, who is separated from his family, conscripted by the Reds during the height of the Revolution. Eventually he successfully deserts and renews a passionate affair with the earthy beauty Lara Federov in a village laid waste by the war. During this time, Tonia and her family are aided to escape to France, where they later learn that Doctor Zhivago is alive and living with Lara. This is a bleakly passionate novel that, unsurprisingly, landed Pasternak in a labor camp. The Revolution is painted in harsh and unsparing colors; it surprises me that it did not lead to the extinction of Russia, so great were the privations and brutalities. I saw the movie as a teen and thought it a fine movie; I'll have to watch it again soon now that I've read the book. My ignorance of world history was further revealed to me; I had not been aware of a war between Russia and Germany in the first years of the 1900's. The book is a bit tough to plough through at times, but is eventually well worth the time. ( )

A look into Russia during and after the revolution and the hardships the people went through. The romance between Dr. Zhivago and the woman with the poetry takes it into greatness. ( )

Caution - this is definitely NOT the movie. The movie took liberties and focused on the love story between Lara and Yuri. For those who think that this book is going to be just like the movie, please take note.

Now that I have that out of the way, Mr. Pasternak's novel is very much a love story but rather than between man and woman, it is between a man and his country. Mr. Pasternak's love for Russia is evident in the care he takes with the scenery and developing the characters in such a way that the reader truly understands what it means to be Russian. His pastoral descriptions are breath-taking and make one want to move to Siberia. His dialogue is pure poetry.

There is so much that occurs in this novel that it is difficult to summarize them into one short assessment. Dr. Zhivago's life is truly tragic and mirrors pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. From the loss of his mother at a young age to the loss of his beloved Lara, Yuri faces world wars, civil war, imprisonment by revolutionaries, and so much more. Lara, too, faces her own trials and tribulations throughout the novel. In fact, the best description is that each major character faces his or her own personal revolution. Interspersed with the tragic details are details about life in revolutionary Russia.

Speaking of revolutionary Russia, as an American, the descriptions of life in the early stages of the U.S.S.R. is fascinating. Mr. Pasternak gives the reader a glimpse of a world that the Western world has vilified and which the Russian culture has kept secret from outsiders. It is an amazing study of culture and history, written by a man who truly does love his country. I feel privileged to have been able to get a glimpse of this mysterious world. In addition, it has helped me understand a bit more about the Cold War and the machinations behind it.

Make no mistake, this is an extremely challenging read. However, if you stick with it, you will be rewarded with a better understanding of Soviet Russia, the Russian culture, and with some of the most beautiful passages I have ever had the pleasure of reading. This isn't for the faint of heart, and I'll admit that I had to do some side research to make sure that I understood the history behind the story. In spite of that, I am extremely glad that I read this novel and would recommend it to others who are interested in Russian history. ( )

Its a very interesting story it is based on a story between two lovers who fight for their love.. and try to find their lost love.
its a heartbreaking story.. worth to read! ( )

I have been offput in the past by the volume of Dr. Zhivago, and at times it was difficult to read because of its size, and the slow pace it takes.
It is however, a fantastic piece of literature which looks at the way many lives in first world war Russia became affected by circumstances, and coincidentally interrelated.
The language used is fantastic, the characters, very vividly painted and repainted as they grow older and although not an action-packed thriller, very very interesting and beautifully written.
I have strongly recommended this and can see why it is a classic, however it is not quite the kind of book that you find hard to put down. It is at times, a mission to pick it back up! but definitely worth it. ( )

A novel of epic proportions. What a pleasure to read it in its original language! ( )

Pasternak's writing is, for me, extremely vivid and his descriptions and settings evoke powerful images in my mind. I really enjoyed reading this book, although some of it I admit I found hard to understand. I'm not too familiar with Russian history, but that did not take anything away from my enjoyment of the book.

All the characters were well set out, particularly the main ones - and I was pleased to see a reference at the front of the book as to who the characters were, and their relationships etc.

I thoroughly recommend reading this fantastic story. ( )

One of my favorite novels, and one of the greatest love stories of all time. ( )

multiple reads, ugrad reqd ( )

Reviewing a classic is always difficult business. Most people are likely familiar with the storyline, if only from the Omar Sharif film. Pasternak tells the story of an elite doctor and his family whose lives are thrown into turmoil by the Russian Revolution. During the revolution Zhivago loses his connections to his family and his wealth. But weaving throughout this undeniably tragic tale is the real focus, Zhivago's blossoming relationship with a young woman, Lara. The two come in and out of contact during the war, due more to the vagaries of circumstance than to careful planning, knowledge, or ability to execute travel plans. What results is a deeply tender and moving relationship formed in the crucible of wartime. Pasternak had a clear political agenda in Zhivago, to show the cruelty and violence of the Bolshevik regime, and to highlight the dangers of a corrupted regime. The suffering and misery of the Russian people are clearly acute, and Pasternak presents a vibrant portrait of life in Russia at war. In many ways this reads like so many Russian classics-- deep moral themes, dense plot structure, and a brilliant recreation of environment. It's difficult to review a work of great literature, but I much enjoyed Zhivago. I got the message, I felt the pathos, and I soaked up the Russian environment. I absorbed every bit of this book that I could. ( )

I first read this book when I was fourteen. Get this --- it was assigned as a textbook in an Italian literature course I was following when I attended high school in Milan. Like, far out, man, dig? The guy's Russian, for goodness' sakes. But I liked it straight away, as it tuned in with my hormonally-high, sexually frustrated adolescence. That was a funny period in my life. I fell in love with virtually any girl who talked to me, and a lot of those who didn't. It must seem as though I had very low standards and lots of girls consequently, but the truth is, girls smell overeagerness like dogs smell fear; unlike dogs chasing after fearful running backsides though, they steer well clear of it. I always became everyone's friend, and the label stuck there like dog poo under a damn shoe, I couldn't get rid of it no matter what. So in this desolation I played romantic games with myself where I imagined I was Nemorino in the Elisir D'Amore or some similarly love-challenged loser (the technical Italian term is ``sfigato'', for those of you who speak it). Who better to identify with than a guy who declares, ``I'd never feel jealous if a man whom I hold in high esteem were to fall in love with the same woman I love: rather, I'd feel a sort of common woe''? I mean you can sweep his Lara away and as long as he likes you, he'll just sigh and say, c'est la vie. Ain't he grand? So other boys got off with the girls I liked (almost all girls, that is) and my trick was just to hold them in high esteem, like Zhivago. So after becoming the unfuckable friend of every girl I met, I also became (luckily also unfuckable) friends with all the boys in order to deflect jealousy. After all, Jurij Andreevic was doing it too, right? The problem was, people were getting off all over the place whilst I was reading Doctor Zhivago and crying over fictional characters' love stories. And once you see the film, man, you'll understand that your standards are all wrong. OK, then, Jurij was not saying what he was saying on accounts of just any girl. It was Julie Christie! Have you seen her? No, I mean, have you really really looked at her? My standards were all wrong. I should have just fucked the fuckable, been jealous by the spadeloads, and maybe held off for Julie Christie. Right, so then I'm not a xerox of Omar Sharif, that I'll grant you. But Doctor Zhivago did pay off later on. I must have been around 20 or 21, and spent a holiday at an international summer school of music in Vasto, Italy. It was a good age. I was having fun all over, my summers were all the rage. I'd been inter-railing, I'd run off to Amsterdam to smoke my eyes out, and did it again. It was just great. No real responsibilities, I was doing well in my mathematics degree, my parents were forking out. I was relaxed and forward and reached out to people when I met them. So I saw this girl at the music school. German. Blond. Very beautiful. Actually, I can even show you her picture: http://www.nmz.de/nmz/nmz2001/nmz03/s... (the blond one on the right, you bastards --- the other one is her mother), I googled her some time ago and out she popped. Well we flirted and we kissed and really nothing else but I was on top of the world. I felt I was in love. Whatever. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. But the point is that I gave her a copy of Doctor Zhivago as a gift, and kept comparing us to Lara and Zhivago for various reasons. It's almost comical: we lived in different countries; after the summer I tried once to go and see her but I literally did not find her. She said she had a concert somewhere else, and she hadn't received my message. Older and wiser I am now, master Yoda, and can more easily reckon the truth. Back then, I just didn't know what to do. So I toured around a strange German city with my rucksack and my skateboard, and I dreamed, waking and walking. I wrote things down in my notebook. If I read these things now, I think to myself, I must have been on drugs. Making a huge mistake, I once let my parents read it, too, and of course it backfired: they accused me of being on drugs. The truth is I wasn't. I was lonely, estranged, disillusioned, and longing for a person that just wasn't there, notwithstanding all my imaginative efforts with us cast in Lara and Zhivago's characters. My advice to you, loser boys, is: read it and store useful bits to make girls fall in love with you later on. My advice to lover girls is, don't compare yourself to Lara. The contest with Tonja is much easier. ( )

I thought this was a reasonably good novel but I suspect that most people will not enjoy it. It is very strong and sure on all matters affecting politics and the people who succumb to bad ideas. It is worth reading for that alone. It is also clever in the way characters meet up again and again by sheer coincidence: this is Pasternak's way of showing how real life rebels against mechanical theories of history. The novel is weakest purely as a story. The story sprawls and the author isn't wholly in control. Here the most nagging shortcoming is that the author does not make it as clear as he might exactly what purpose the love relationship serves in the story.

It's easy to be put off by the large number of characters, most of whom are introduced in the first one hundred pages or so. It becomes clear as the story moves on that most characters are introduced for colour and scene.

This was a bit of a slog for me. Tedious story of one man's life and love during the Russian Revolution and the resulting Civil War. There is quite a bit of complex, yet dated political ideology, painful philosophizing and . . . aargh! . . . poetry. In addition there are alot of characters with similar sounding names, nicknames, aliases. Characters had a habit of popping up again in the way of preposterous chance encounters. While I did not so much mind this plot device -- I could barely remember who the heck they were when they reappeared!

While I ordinarily like a book that requires a close read and requires knowledge of a historical time period -- this novel did not really reward the effort. I did not care for Yurii, nor Lara and found their actions and reactions hyperbolic and at times nonsensical. I did, however, enjoy the beautiful descriptions of the wintery Siberian landscape -- the white out of a blizzard, the crunch of boots on hard-packed snow, branches with hoarfrost -- breathtaking and rather haunting.

I really wanted to like this book. But just too many parts that did not hold my interest, nor generate enough authentic emotion. ( )

First published in Italy in 1957, Boris Pasternak's sweeping epic Doctor Zhivago stirred controversy in his native Russia. Set in Moscow and the Ural Mountains, the novel tells the story of a poet-physician whose life is defined by the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath. The novel's underlying criticism of the Bolshevik party led to it being banned until 1988 in Russia. When Pasternak was chosen for the esteemed Nobel Prize for Literature, his native Russians protested so much that the author declined the honor. Felt to be largely autobiographical, Doctor Zhivago reveals much about its author's philosophical ideology and personal life.

The novel opens with the suicide of Zhivago's father just before the Russian Revolution when Zhivago is still a young boy. Pasternak reveals early on that the novel will be about truth and sacrifice; about one man's beliefs and how he lives with his choices.

As the story develops, the reader is pulled into the life of Zhivago, who matures into a young man, loses his wealth, marries his childhood sweetheart, becomes embroiled in the fast accelerating revolution and finds Lara, his true love. The overriding theme of the novel is the importance of the individual vs. the rules of the state and the terror inflicted on the masses in the name of a political ideal.

Pasternak writes prose like the poet he was - painting the chaos of the times on wide brush strokes of beautiful description.

Throughout the novel, the idea of fate - of being swept along with the tide of the times - is often repeated. Characters re-emerge in unusual ways, seemingly by coincidence - and yet we are left with the idea that some things cannot be chance and nothing is coincidental. The characters seem to be victims of the Soviet ideology.

Most people think of Doctor Zhivago as a love story. The love between Lara and Yurii spins throughout the novel, and reminds the reader again about the power of the individual even during tumult and upheaval. But, calling Doctor Zhivago merely a love story would be undervaluing its bigger messages. The novel is full of wonderful passages and beautiful prose; and defines a generation of Russians during a cataclysmic time in history.

Certainly a classic and one which will stand the test of time - Doctor Zhivago is a must read for anyone who strives to better understand the Russian Revolution and who has a love of great literature.

Highly Recommended. ( )

http://www.operanarrativa.com/index.p... ( )

Full review: ( http://bachlab.balbach.net/coolread4.... ) in summary: sometimes unequal masterpiece of grand and epic scope, a classic of Russian literature tradition. ( )

Interweaving storylines of love and loss before, during and after the Russian revolution. If you can keep all the (changing) names straight, a great read. ( )

Beautiful, moving historical fiction. I liked the span of the book, I liked watching the characters move through this period in Russian history and seeing how it affected their lives. A beautiful novel to savor. ( )

There are Doctor Zhivagos to be found everywhere, in the midst of every conflict. Those who do not wish exactly for peace, but for life. Set in the harsh, cold beauty of Russia, and given life through the eyes of a lover and poet, the story of Doctor Zhivago is a timeless, universal and tragic story of one in love with life and beauty in the midst of death and destruction. ( )

I read to page 60, but a combination of things decided me to stop. One, the book smelled badly of cigarette smoke. Blech. Two, it is dreary and very long. Three, the subject matter is not what I enjoy reading about. I am too old and life it too short, there are too many wonderful books waiting for me. Why plow through such a book of misery. Give me Dostevsky(sp?) or Tolstoy for my Russian literature.

I'm lost meandering through this book like the train carrying Yuri and Tonya into the Russian backwaters. I really want to like this book, just listen to this endorsement featured on the back cover: "A book that made a most profound impression upon me and the memory of which still does...not since Shakespeare has love been so fully, vividly, scrupulously and directly communication" and this "..[belongs] to that small group of novels by which all others are ultimately judged". I can appreciate snippets of it like Yuri sleeping for days on the train seemed to really capture the mood of the book at that time, and some little phrases from heaven like the description of the sun coming up through the mist like a fat man in a steam bath. But overall I'm just not captured by it, otherwise I'd be reading it right now instead of writing this. Finally I got to the end and I must say at some point gave up on trying to track through the complex web of characters. Really if you want to enjoy the book take notes of the main characters and how they intersect at different points during the novel. I kind of want to reread it to put all the pieces together but life is far too short for me to bother. ( )

Oh, those Russians. Tortured, romantic, introspective and tumultuous, I deeply wanted to love this book. But it was as slow as a week in the Steppes. A love story, I hoped it would knock some of the tosh we have to read into a cocked hat. But Niet, it wasn't to be. ( )