A little bit of background...
Boris Pasternak was born in Russia in 1890, and by the time of the Russian Revolution was a well-known avant-garde poet. His work fell into disfavor during the 1920s and 1930s as the communist regime of Joseph Stalin imposed strict censorship on Russian art and literature.
Boris Pasternak’s romantic novel, Dr. Zhivago was banned in the Soviet Union, but was published in the US in 1958 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the same year.
Not one of our favorites...
If my memory serves me correctly, we only had four people at our February meeting for "Dr. Zhivago". Kudos to Kellie - she was the only one who read the entire book. This was not an easy book to read. Maybe it was the translation? This was one of those books that can be frustrating to read because you have to keep looking back at the list of characters (with long Russian names) to figure out who the author was talking about and how they fit into the story. We did not end up discussing very much of the book because almost no one had read enough. Personally, I was disappointed with the book because I love the movie so much and had such high expectations, but this is one of those rare occasions where the movie is so much better than the book. We were curious about the movie and did some "googling". The movie was released in the US in 1965. Since the book was banned in the Soviet Union the film could not be made there and was instead filmed mostly in Spain. The film won five Academy Awards and as of 2014 is the eighth highest grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. It did not win an Academy for best picture ("My Fair Lady" won). It was also nominated for five Golden Globes and won all five including best picture!
Not a big surprise...
"Dr. Zhivago" was not rated very highly, but to be fair, very little was read. I believe the highest rating was a 2.5
On to the next book...
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