There are connections upon connections, so that all the characters are interwoven into a very tight story. I think the thing is that it's not a book to read too quickly, because you miss a LOT of things.

There is a lot of symbolism in the book. Komarovsky isn't just Lara's lover, or her mother's lawyer, or the man who caused (directly or indirectly) Yuri's father's death. He's also styled after the poet Mayakovsky, and Pasternak indicts him as being a lover of the fine things in life who nonetheless hypocritically prostitutes himself out to the Bolsheviks as a means of personal advancement.