Review by New York Times Review
STALIN SUPPOSEDLY CALLED Boris Pasternak a "cloud dweller," ordering the secret police to spare the poet. This helps explain how Pasternak survived to old age even as fellow writers were killed or sent to the gulag. Pasternak's protected status did not, however, extend to all of his loved ones. In "Lara: The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago," Anna Pasternak, the poet's grandniece, explores the life of Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak's longtime mistress and an inspiration for the character of Lara, Dr. Zhivago's lover. But the "untold" in the subtitle simply isn't true. The story of Pasternak's affair with Olga has been told repeatedly - for instance, in Olga's own memoirs, which serve as a central source for "Lara" and are available in English, as are memoirs by several of Pasternak's family members and friends. Thirty-four-year-old Olga Ivinskaya had been widowed twice and had two children when, in 1946, she met Pasternak, 22 years her senior. Pasternak began courting her immediately. At the time, he was unhappily married to his second wife, Zinaida, whose favorite activities included chain-smoking and playing cards, and who had attracted him with her exceptional housekeeping skills. (The poet prized domestic routine, a necessary precondition for the exercise of his genius.) Olga had worshiped Pasternak's writing since she was a teenager, and she leapt at the chance to become his lover and artistic amanuensis. Until his death nearly 14 years later, Zinaida would be unsympathetic to Pasternak's feeble efforts to divorce her and marry Olga. Zinaida had many incentives to stay married to Pasternak; despite his unwillingness to submit to Soviet requirements, his international fame brought substantial economic and social benefits. Olga, on the other hand, became a victim of her lover's prestige. In 1949, unable to arrest Pasternak for his private readings of drafts of the anti-Soviet "Doctor Zhivago," the secret police arrested Olga instead. She spent several years in a labor camp but returned as devoted as ever, helping Pasternak finish "Doctor Zhivago" and then attempting to have it published. When Pasternak gave the manuscript to a young Italian visitor in 1956. he condemned not only himself but also Olga and her family. Soviet authorities were enraged by the international sensation that "Doctor Zhivago" caused, and by the subsequent announcement that Pasternak had won the Nobel Prize. Pasternak was ostracized and harassed. In despair, he proposed a suicide pact with Olga; she talked him out of it. Pasternak was placed under heavy pressure to emigrate. He could have taken Olga and her family with him, but he felt unable to endure such a dramatic break with his old life. Finally, he refused the Nobel Prize. As he lay dying of lung cancer in 1960, Olga was not allowed to see or speak to him. A few months later Olga was arrested again, along with her daughter. Authorities wanted to cleanse the great writer's reputation by blaming a sinful "adventuress" for the politically embarrassing "Doctor Zhivago." In "Lara," Anna Pasternak treats "Doctor Zhivago" as a romance, more or less interchangeable with the hit movie, and she displays minimal understanding of Pasternak's literary achievement. (Though he is best known outside Russia for "Doctor Zhivago," Pasternak's most innovative and influential work was poetry.) "Lara" is poorly organized and ïarded with romantic clichés. Evgeny Pasternak, the poet's eldest son, provides more insight in a few quoted lines than "Lara" manages to do in a chapter. Pasternak fans and incurable romantics will be better off sticking to "Doctor Zhivago," or searching out the earlier memoirs that serve as this new book's central sources. SOPHIE PINKHAM'S "Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine" was published in November.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Poet and writer Boris Pasternak was revered in Russia. Even Stalin, who murdered or imprisoned many artists, liked him, though Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya, Pasternak's great love, mistress, and the muse for the figure of Lara in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, was sent to labor camps. And Doctor Zhivago itself, with its many semi-autobiographical flourishes, was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. Here, Anna Pasternak, Boris' great-niece, tells the story of Lara for the first time. As a family member, she can pull in personal conversations for instance, with Boris' sister Josephine, who died in 1993 and would never speak Olga's name. This story is as tragic and heartrending as Doctor Zhivago, as Anna details his two marriages, the Russian people's love of Boris' poetry, and the love affair that not only dominated his life but also allowed him, she posits, to write Doctor Zhivago, the goal of which was a lifelong dream. Pasternak's romances were difficult on those he loved wives, lovers, and children and he suffered as well in many ways, yet his art flourished. Hand this to Russophiles, poets, and romantics.--Kinney, Eloise Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This accessible history sketches the stories of a literary love affair and a great novel whose cultural and political impact may now seem almost unimaginable to a modern audience. Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, an epic of revolutionary Russia and the passion that burned between its eponymous protagonist and his beloved Lara Guichard, had a history nearly as tumultuous as its story line. As described by Anna Pasternak (Daisy Dooley Does Divorce), an English journalist and great-niece of the late author, twice-married Boris's 13-year liaison with editor Olga Ivinskaya was passionate and consuming, and likely the reason he could complete his great work-Ivinskaya provided him both inspiration and practical assistance. Much of this history recounts Boris's hounding by Soviet authorities, who objected to his unflattering portrayal of the revolution, blocked his book's publication in Russia, and forced him to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. For Ivinskaya's part, she was harassed by the KGB, suffered two miscarriages, and twice was sentenced to labor camps, first to pressure Boris to abandon Zhivago and then to punish her for his defiance. Boris emerges here as self-absorbed, vain, reckless, and also brave enough to get his opus published. Pasternak doesn't always convey the larger historical context, but nonetheless this is a sensitive and fairly careful account of one of literature's great backstories. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A British journalist investigates her great-uncles love affair.Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) was 56 and married to his second wife, Zinaida, when he met 34-year-old Olga Ivinskaya and immediately fell in love: She is so enchanting, such a radiant, golden person, he exulted. I never thought I would still know such joy. Flattered by the attentions of Russias most lauded poet, Olga reciprocated his passion. Pasternak (Daisy Dooley Does Divorce, 2007, etc.) draws on family correspondence; memoirs by Olga, her daughter (whom Pasternak interviewed), Boris sister and son; and Boris own writings to sensitively examine the dramatic relationship as well as to rescue the reputation of the woman whom the Pasternak family derided and denounced. At first, Pasternak worried about discovering that Boris used Olga but concluded that he did his best within the constraints of his domestic situation to honour her and her family, supporting them financially and trusting Olga with his most precious commodityhis work. He sought her advice, her editing and typing assistance and showed his love in his novel Doctor Zhivago, which Pasternak reads as a long and heartfelt love letter to her. Nevertheless, Boris comes across as self-absorbed, at best naively romantic, enjoying the drama of anguish and torment that he created for long-suffering Olga and his wife and children. He seemed to care nothing about putting them at risk with his defiance of Stalinist policy. He was somewhat protected by fame, but Olga was vulnerable: twice she was arrested, sentenced to years in gulags. I owe my life and the fact that they did not touch me in those years to her heroism and endurance, Boris admitted. Yet he was so insensitive that upon her release from prison, he asked her daughter to tell her that their relationship was over. Pasternaks recounting of the publication of Doctor Zhivago, and Soviet pressure for him to renounce the Nobel Prize in Literature, draws largely on Peter Finn and Petra Couves The Zhivago Affair (2014). A sympathetic portrait of a woman who saw her lover in the same heroic light as he saw himself. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
