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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