Sunday, February 7, 2021

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternak

What’s with Russian authors and characters committing suicide by throwing themselves in front of a train?  In this case, the suicide is that of the title character’s father.  The son, obviously, goes on to become a doctor but has lots of other adventures against the backdrop of the Bolshevik Revolution.  The civil war was extremely confusing to me, trying to keep up with who was fighting for which side, but the Russian names were even more confusing.  Plus, sometimes a character has more than one nickname, and none of these names are remotely similar.  Case in point:  “This was Zlydarikha or Kubarikha, a soldier’s wife who was a cattle healer, a veterinarian, and also, secretly, a witch.”  All that aside, Dr. Zhivago’s first name is Yurii, and he marries his childhood friend Tonia.  However, while serving as a medic during WWI, he meets Lara, a beautiful nurse.  Their relationship is the basis for what is considered to be a great love story, but, actually, their time together is relatively short, interrupted for a while when Yurii is captured by a faction of the Red Army to serve as their medic.  The passion of their relationship certainly does not jump off the page, and that could be due to the era in which the book was written or to flaws in the translation.  I think that the David Lean movie or the miniseries with Keira Knightly would be more up my alley.

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