Doctor Zhivago is beautiful. It's philosophical, tragic honey, like Gone with the Wind or The Petrified Forest. Set to the backdrop of the First World War, the Russia Revolution and the following Civil War, this book tells the story of a young doctor from Moscow, and the people most closely connected to him.
Every character is tragic, but I loved Lara the most. She is forever a victim of circumstance, constantly abandoned by the men in her life. I nearly cried over her. She disappears from the book, as if in the end, she is unimportant--just another nameless face in history.
Doctor Zhivago is well known enough, I feel, for me not to explain the full plot, but I would like to share one of my favourite passages:
Wars, revolutions, tsars, Robespierres--these are its organic stimulants,
its fermenting yeast. Revolutions are produced by men of action,
one-sided fanatics, geniuses of self limitation. In a few hours or days
they overturn the old order. The upheavals last for weeks, for years
at the most, and then for decades, for centuries, people bow down
to the spirit of limitation that led to the upheavals as to something sacred
(p. 538-539).
As a side note, the 1965 film adaptation is wonderful and follows the book very closely,
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I am failing to understand something!