None of them are bad people or morally wrong and you genuinely believe that Yuri faces true agonies because he loves two women. Tonya and Antipov, adore their respective husband and wife. This is a novel, ultimately, about Yuri and Lara and the people who loved them. Yuri spots a light burning in a window as a young man and it is Lara's light Yuri administers to Lara's cruel 'uncle' who Lara has shot and the pair go onto meet much later in the novel. These invisible ties to to people made me believe that Lara and Yuri were always destined to meet. The cast of characters feels immense, but the closeness in the way the novel has been written, makes you feel as if there were only 20 people living in Russia at that time. Throughout the book, there is a real feeling of links, lives are intertwined and people met in passing pop up much later in the novel to steer Yuri and Lara on a new path.

The novel went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature and it is not hard to see why. Set in Russia during the turbulent First World War and throughout the Russian Revolution, it is a comment on the society he lives in as much as a potted history of the Revolution. The story focuses on the love story between Doctor Yuri Zhivago and two women his wife and mother of his children Tonya, and Larissa Fyodorovna (Lara), a young woman who he has been destined to meet throughout the novel. The Communist Party of Russia rejected it for publication but the manuscript was smuggled to Italy where it was then published. This novel has been described as one of the greatest love stories ever told, which is incredible when you consider it was nearly not published. The film was epic and wonderful and I was definitely pleased I had watched the movie before starting on the book. What I can tell you, is that Dr Zhivago has been on that pile forever! Over Christmas and finding that I had a free afternoon, I spotted that the Dr Zhivago film was on the BBC starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie and thought it would be perfect to curl up with and hopefully inspire me to start reading the novel. I don't believe that I can be the only person with a towering to be read pile.

Pasternak dr zhivago