This morning I was finally able to finish Doctor Zhivago. It took about two weeks for me to finish it. I have some mixed feelings about it. The book is highly recommended, with Englands' The Guardian touting it as one of the top 100 novels of all time. Yet as I read it, it really seemed to be one of those "slice of life" stories. One of my college English professors, for a creative writing class, insisted that "slice of life" rarely works. And in a way, Doctor Zhivago doesn't work. It chronicles the life of Yuri Zhivago, first set against World War I, then the Russian Revolution, then World War II. Zhivago's life touches many other lives, especially amidst the continual chaos from World War I all the way through World War II.
It's been said that communism looks good on paper, but doesn't work in practice. That's about the most I got out of this book. Don't get me wrong me wrong: the book was good, and after the initial onslaught of characters, the central characters were better developed. But in the end it almost seemed that Boris Pasternak was saying, "Communism might be a good idea, but it doesn't actually work. Look what it did to this guy."
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