Sprawling History, Sprawling Novel

The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia

Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
New York : Vintage Classics, 2011.
xxviii, 675 p. ; 21 cm.

I've been wanting to read Dr. Zhivago for some time, and given it's length  (675 p.), it seemed like a good choice for a summer read.

I enjoyed a lot about this novel - it richly conveys the crazy reality that war and revolution can force on people, and the ways in which people try to find a meaningful life within that.  It is also a great love story, of course, which is probably part of why the movie version in the 60s was so successful.

I liked the historical content and movement of a lot of the book, but I did find that the plot began to get a bit unwieldy and confusing as the novel went on, and felt rushed to me at the end.  I also just found the increasing number of improbable coincidences became distracting as read the book.

This was a good book, but not a fantastic novel, in the way that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy have their truly magnificent articles.  However, if a student is a fan of Russian/Soviet history and literature and is looking for a good read, Dr. Zhivago may be just what the doctor ordered!

Judging Anna

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
New York: Penquin Books, c2002.
837 p. ; 22 cm.

I tried reading this novel last summer and simply ran out of time, and so this summer I started it in early June and finished it by the end of the month. Several people had recommended Anna Karenina to me and I was not disappointed.

I think the best quality of the book is how sympathetic and complex all the main characters are and how intricately developed personal relationships are in the novel. Whether its the adulterous Anna, her lover Voronsky, the initially superficial Kitty, or the country estate owning Levin- the reader can expect to find her sympathies changing as the characters change and develop throughout the course of this long novel.

I also was pleasantly surprised by several plot twists that caught me completely unawares and reveal the hand of a truly masterful storyteller in Tolstoy.

I read the introduction to the book after finishing the novel and I'm glad I did since there were several plot spoilers in the introduction. But I appreciated the information about Tolstoy's first intentions for the novel - to make it a morality tale about adultery - which he let go of as he developed and came to like the complex main character of the novel, the eponymous Anna Karenina.

Finally, I should note that I read this novel on an eReader, a Nook, and quite liked it.