Novels

Dr Zhivago

Anyone read it? What is your experience?

For me, like so many Russian novels, it is like dragging yourself through a mine field set up in a thorn bush. But unlike other Russian novels, in my opinion, it rewards you for it. By the end you want everything on the planet to just die so it can stop suffering, but you feel like you really learned something. It is satisfying on a very difficult to describe level. It cuts straight through all the bullshit. Even though most of the characters have a penchant for intellectual pursuits, it seems like none of it actually makes it into a relevant interpretation of what happens. On the other hand, the intellectual content of these characters provides an incredibly accurate story of those ideas. Not an analysis, but how they fit in the history of what happened. So many things that have become mythologized, like the revolution itself, the secret police, the gulags, the aristocracy, the common people, are presented and understood by the reader with astonishing clarity.

I hate to say this about a book designed to make you suffer, but I loved it.