Not a review of Doctor Zhivago

Part of Russian Revolution Week.

I volunteered for it. That is probably the most galling element of the whole soul-sapping experience. An invitation was offered to the group, and swept along on a tide of camaraderie plus affection for the organiser- our Russian expert, Kirsty – I stuck up my virtual hand and said, “Alright I’ll read Doctor sodding Zhivago.” By the end of the first page of Pasternak’s masterpiece, the chills began to creep up my spine, and my face grew hot. A niggling voice in my mind informed me that this book was going to be a torture. A cheerier and somewhat booming voice suggested that it would all be fine and to get on with reading the damn thing, since I’d blinking well promised. When I had read the second page some seven times and gleaned but a shard of the meaning, I knew I was in deep poop. I wanted to like it. Hell, I’d loved Dostoyevsky, surely Pasternak would be just as good? They were, after all, both Russian. Hmm, the idiocy of this thought was not lost on me even at the time. Two sheep might live in the same field but still be very different sheep, with different styles, ideas and, er, abilities. One of them might even write like a droning vicar. That would be the Pasternak sheep.

A great love story, an idealistic hero, the madness of war, the suffering of children, passion, betrayal, revolution, the self versus the state, the necessity of poetry, the death of individuals meaning nothing, the end justifying the means, the very point of existence; all of this I expected to find entrancing. After all, these elements make sturdy bones for an epic tale to be strung upon. So the raw materials were there, but the end product. . .

I suppose I was expecting a novel. It didn’t feel much like a novel. It felt like the characters were mouthpieces for the philosophising of the author. Now, from time to time a bit of author transparency is fine, but for me this espousing of rhetoric by various characters representative of an archetype made the book pretty darn unreadable. Perhaps the author expected the reader to possess a familiarity with the theories and philosophies in question. This reader has no such familiarity.

Then there is the enormous cast of characters. If I am going to read about a character, I want there to be something at least a bit interesting about them. I want their existence to be justified. I don’t want them there simply to make a certain point of the author’s and then vanish into the ether. They don’t have to be nice, or horrid, for that matter. They just have to hook my attention. Alas none of the characters in the first part of Doctor Zhivago managed this feat. Possibly because none of them appeared remotely human-being-like to me. I hate to say it, but my aching reader brain deemed them: random words on a page.

When books are sent to me, I give them the fifty page test and if I still want to keep reading after that it’s more than likely that I’ll go on to review. During the period in which I was attempting to read Doctor Zhivago, I put it down and read Tana French’s The Likeness, Lee Rourke’s Everyday and the wonderful Tic-tac Teddy Bears and Teardrop Tattoos. It is a sad state of affairs when a jaunty fact-book featuring teddy bear trivia can obliterate a masterpiece.

I wanted to like Zhivago. The very fact that some of the other bookfoxes assumed I would hate it naturally had the effect of making me hellbent on loving the book. And I don’t generally dislike the classics of literature. Dickens, Hardy, Austen, Lawrence, Camus, Fitzgerald, the Brontës: great! Heck, I even like George Eliot, and I’ve listened to hours of undergraduate whinging about her. Zhivago, however, defeated me.

I can’t remember the last time I gave up on a book. I’m not sure that I ever have. It is likely that over the coming months I will try again to wade through Doctor Zhivago, as I know that beneath the wool there is an important and affecting story. Plus, the shame of not being able to finish it will stay with me and nibble, like a fleet-of-foot flea.

So when all is said and done, I am a failure. I have committed the cardinal sin of book reading. Not even a quarter of the way through Doctor Zhivago I gave up and watched the film. Not a quarter of the way through the film, I enjoyed a snowy dream. I have since finished watching the film and I felt very moved throughout (”cried a river” springs to mind). It seemed to me that film was a much more natural medium for this epic story, and I’m sure we’ll discuss such ideas further in our upcoming “Adaptations Week”. For me the form of this novel – its style and the structure – hampered the story.

If any of you good people love Doctor Zhivago: The Novel, perhaps you can convince me to read on. Perhaps your enthusiasm will inspire me. Alternatively, feel free to chip in with masterpieces that have defeated you.

For Doctor Zhivago factoids and insights, click here.

Harvill, ISBN 1-86046-169-7, 510 pages, £7.99