Books: Early Pasternak

THE LAST SUMMER (159 pp.)—Boris Pasternak, translated by George Reavey —Avon (paperbound, 50¢).

"A new novel by Nobel Prize Winner Pasternak," trumpeted the gaily colored cover. Actually, the book was neither new nor a novel. Scarcely longer than a long short story, The Last Summer was first published in Leningrad 25 years ago, some two decades before Doctor Zhivago was written. Last year, with a shorter introduction (soso) and in the same translation (first-rate), the story appeared in the U.S. in a collection of poems and articles entitled Noonday 1. It sold an...