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rue_baldry 's review for:
Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak
This translation is rather stilted, but nevertheless there are phrases, sometimes whole paragraphs, where the poetry of Pasternak's prose shines through.
The characters' emotions and responses are overblown and unrealistic. Much of the plot turns on these melodramatic reactions and decisions made based on them. Their motivations were generally unclear.
There are memorable, haunting descriptions of and explanations of the events in Russia before, during and after the revolution. The story leaps from event to event, though, skipping out huge swathes of time, and thus making emotional engagement difficult.
Characters weave in and out of Zhivago's life. A passage near the end compares a slow tram stopping and starting on the same road as a hurrying pedestrian to the way peoples' lives run parallel. It's rather confusing to read and easy to forget who is who, though, especially as they all have a half dozen different names (thank goodness for the dramatis personae lost at the front of this edition).
The novel is at it's best when it settles to fully describe a period of Zhivago's life for a sustained number of pages. I could detect no overall cohesion, though, and there's far too much pontification.
The characters' emotions and responses are overblown and unrealistic. Much of the plot turns on these melodramatic reactions and decisions made based on them. Their motivations were generally unclear.
There are memorable, haunting descriptions of and explanations of the events in Russia before, during and after the revolution. The story leaps from event to event, though, skipping out huge swathes of time, and thus making emotional engagement difficult.
Characters weave in and out of Zhivago's life. A passage near the end compares a slow tram stopping and starting on the same road as a hurrying pedestrian to the way peoples' lives run parallel. It's rather confusing to read and easy to forget who is who, though, especially as they all have a half dozen different names (thank goodness for the dramatis personae lost at the front of this edition).
The novel is at it's best when it settles to fully describe a period of Zhivago's life for a sustained number of pages. I could detect no overall cohesion, though, and there's far too much pontification.