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. ( )

Pasternak schrijft, zoals we dat van Russische schrijvers gewend zijn, zeer breedvoerig en tot in detail, waardoor het verhaal veel aan kracht inboet. Hulde ook aan degenen die na honderd bladzijden nog weten wie wie is. Een down in het begin en één aan het einde, maar wel een paar indrukwekkende ups in het midden.
Volledige bespreking via http://wraakvandedodo.blogspot.com/20... ( )

Parfois trop détaillé, parfois simplement allusif: on a l’impression de rater quelque chose (l’essentiel?)
Strelnikov est désespérément plat, d’autres personnages pratiquement inexistants.
Sauvé par les vers de Youri (à lire en russe, évidemment). ( )

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. ( )