The fictional life of a physician and poet during the Russian revolution and civil war
This edition is translated by Nicholas Pasternak Slater, Boris' grandson, bound with poems of Yuri Zhivago with reproductions of paintings and drawings by Leonid Pasternak, Boris' father.
This saga opens with the early years of Zhivago and his friends, growing up in Moscow and the Urals, students from wealthy families. Zhivago is a medical student during the 1905 revolution, witnesses the Cossack charge into the revolutionaries. At the same time, Lara, his love of his later years, is losing her virginity to Komorovsky, a wealthy lawyer. In distress, she shoots and wounds him at a party, but the event is ignored by the wealthy guests. Komorovsky feels guilty and supports Lara's education and work for a seamstress Yuri and Lara meet when she is a nurse, and he a doctor, at the western front in WW1. Lara had gone there to search for her husband Pavel Pavelovich Antipov, a son of the family that owned Varykino, the estate where Zhivago takes refuge later in the novel. Antipov is an ensign in the Russian army, but is reported killed in an assault but surfaces later as a feared revolutionary leader Strelnikov, and still later as a fugitive hunted by the Bolsheviks. At the end of the war, Zhivago returns to Moscow. He had married Tonia, a friend from his youth, and they have two children. Zhivago is working as a hospital doctor, but there is no food or firewood in Moscow after the confiscations of revolutionary socialism. They decide to move to Varykino, an estate near Yuratyn, a town in the Urals, where they had spent summers in their youth. They manage to grow food, and keep themselves warm over a winter, but Lara is living in Yuraytin, and on his frequent trips to the library in town, Zhivago meets her again, and they become lovers. On one of his trips to town, Zhivago is seized by partisans to be their doctor. He is with them in Siberia, surrounded by the White Armies in the taiga. Tonia goes back to Moscow and obtains pernission to emigrate to France with her father and children. Zhivago learns of this only after he escapes the partisans. He arrives back in Yuraytin in rags and starving, but Lara is still there, and they again become lovers. They move to the estate at Varykino for a few weeks, living on potatoes, exchanging rapurous words, until Komarovsky, still caring for Lara, arrives to offer Lara, her daughter, and Zhivago, escape to the far east, where Komarovsky is a high minister. Zhivago obscurely feels it is his duty to go back to Moscow, to find out the fate of his family, and tricks Lara to going to the east with Komorovsky. Pavel Antipov shows up the night Lara leaves, has a long philosophical talk with Zhivago, then shoots himself before the Bolsheviks find him. In the final chapters, Zhivago returns to Moscow, but abandons his medical skills, lives in poverty relieved only by his old friends Gordon and Dudurov, takes a common law wife. He disappears when his brother finds him, to rehabilitate himself, but dies of a heart attack on his way to a new hospital post. Lara somehow walks in on his funeral, and in an epilogue, following Gordon and Dudurov in WW2, Lara's daughter surfaces as a washerwoman for their regiment. She knows nothing of her mother, but Zhivago's brother, now a general, hearing her story, vows to make sure she is educated and cared for.
I took a long time reading this. The many characters each have nicknames, formal names, surnames and diminutives, interchangeable in the text. Pasternak was a poet, and his lyrical language when describing the countryside often clogs the action. The plot is driven by coincidental meetings and unlikely survivals. I would not know how accurate the translation is, but the English prose is awkward and simplified. I suspect there are other translations that flow better. ( )

This book is very brutal, long and cold - all the things I don't like in a book. Plus, the main character seems very weak and I truly hate adultery. I gave it three stars, because it was well written, I liked some scenes and I loved the poems. ( )

I honestly was not sure if I was going to like this when I started reading it. I am so glad that I did not put it down. It was an excellent read. Loved it. ( )

This is a fine, long novel to curl up with in winter. I love Pasternak's poetic writing. I read the English translation. I understand that it's even more beautiful in Russian. Thanks to Debbie Johnson for introducing me to this novel. Unforgettable. ( )

The movie is one of my favorites but I'd never read the book. I now understand why it was a Nobel Prize winner - a true classic. The descriptive language is simply superb - while the movie story deviated from the book in small ways, I have a new appreciation for the movie soundtrack, which moved the beautiful and heartbreaking background of Russia in war and peace from words to music nearly seamlessly, making both movie and book amazing works of art. ( )