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A review by sarah_ls
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
2.0
This book was such a disappointment to me. Such a disappointment that a few friends had to endure rants when I was about halfway through. Sorry guys. My chief complaints:
- In the first half of the book, Pasternak seems to have been writing about incidents as they occurred to him rather than in a linear fashion. So it's jumping all over in time, which would have been totally fine, if he had given you a reference point for what year it was or how old the characters were! I still have no idea how old Yury and Lara were in relation to each other. I have no idea when certain events were happening. I had no context for what the hell was going on!
- Idioms! Idioms everywhere! I have never seen so damn many idioms in my entire life, let alone in one book! I can't even begin to describe how many times I wanted to throw the book just for that reason. It was incredibly aggravating. I even tried switching translations thinking it was the translator. But nope, I hit "at daggers drawn" for the fourth or fifth time in that one.
- The book told you what was happening but it never gave me the connective tissue that would have made me actually care about Yury. I was a bored observer to a revolution and civil war. How is that even possible.
The second half of the book did finally settle into just Yury's POV (3rd person) and finally had a linear timeline, so it was an improvement and the book got a bit more interesting. But there were other oddities. Lara was supposed to be a very calm woman but she would go into these long-winded semi-hysterical speeches that made her seem anything but. It did show the extraordinary stress they were under but it didn't make her appear calm.
This book was one I've wanted to read for a very long time and it was the one from my Classics Challenge that I was the most excited about. I understand that many people think it was a wonderful book, but for me it was extremely disappointed. I was at daggers drawn with the book for pretty much the entire time.
One thing that I did find interesting (and totally irrelevant) was that the civil war was between the Reds and the Whites. This reminded me of the Wars of the Roses where the red and white roses symbolized the Houses of Lancaster and York. I wonder why both involved red and white?
- In the first half of the book, Pasternak seems to have been writing about incidents as they occurred to him rather than in a linear fashion. So it's jumping all over in time, which would have been totally fine, if he had given you a reference point for what year it was or how old the characters were! I still have no idea how old Yury and Lara were in relation to each other. I have no idea when certain events were happening. I had no context for what the hell was going on!
- Idioms! Idioms everywhere! I have never seen so damn many idioms in my entire life, let alone in one book! I can't even begin to describe how many times I wanted to throw the book just for that reason. It was incredibly aggravating. I even tried switching translations thinking it was the translator. But nope, I hit "at daggers drawn" for the fourth or fifth time in that one.
- The book told you what was happening but it never gave me the connective tissue that would have made me actually care about Yury. I was a bored observer to a revolution and civil war. How is that even possible.
The second half of the book did finally settle into just Yury's POV (3rd person) and finally had a linear timeline, so it was an improvement and the book got a bit more interesting. But there were other oddities. Lara was supposed to be a very calm woman but she would go into these long-winded semi-hysterical speeches that made her seem anything but. It did show the extraordinary stress they were under but it didn't make her appear calm.
This book was one I've wanted to read for a very long time and it was the one from my Classics Challenge that I was the most excited about. I understand that many people think it was a wonderful book, but for me it was extremely disappointed. I was at daggers drawn with the book for pretty much the entire time.
One thing that I did find interesting (and totally irrelevant) was that the civil war was between the Reds and the Whites. This reminded me of the Wars of the Roses where the red and white roses symbolized the Houses of Lancaster and York. I wonder why both involved red and white?