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Summary: Not only Mrs. Nabakov
Review: I guess that I am a little behind the times on this one, but I just found out today that the author won the Pulitzer for this book. I can't agree more. I felt that she captured the essence of Vera and although it is abundantly clear that Vera was Nabakov's biggest fan and defender, I think that the author does a good job of showing the strength of Vera as her own woman, in her own right. Excellent biography.
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Summary: PERFECT THREE-WAY UNION: HUSBAND, WIFE, AUTHOR.
Review: In a vein not unsimilar to Brenda Maddox's biography of Nora Joyce a decade ago, Stacy Schiff compassionately and vividly weaves together the beautiful tapestry of Vladimir and Vera Nabokov. For those who thought the master's works can speak for themselves, they may want to think again. This lucid, brilliant book brings together the complex author's life, marriage, loves, ideals, frustrations, and, ultimately, genius as biographies rarely do. At the same time, Vera is no shrinking violet either and one wonders about what would have become of the author had she not been a tad forward about meeting him in the first place; certainly the history of 20th century literature would have suffered by it. My wish is that Ms Schiff continue in this vein...perhaps a different view of Frieda Lawrence or the long-suffering Mrs Dickens? Like this book, they will most likely be indispensable.
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Summary: yes, but....
Review: it was a very good biography, but if you read the Boyd bio of her husband first you may be left wondering if he had already snatched up all the good quotes.
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Summary: I'm coming clean...
Review: It was a year ago almost to the day that I posted an anonymous review of Schiff's great Vera biography (April 18, 1999--"An awesome job on a seemingly impossible task.") It was a stilted, if heartfelt, tribute to the book's brilliance. Given today's announcement of the book's winning the Pulitzer, I can't resist going on record now and trumpeting that I was one of the earliest fans of the book. And if you're reading this, Stacy, Congrats.
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Summary: Véra & Vladimir & Vladimir & Véra, by fermed
Review: It would be impossible to write the biography of Véra alone without the biography of V. Nabokov being integrally attached to it: at some profound level they were one and the same entity. Véra and Vladimir were, in the end, each other's inventions: each one held up a peculiarly distorted mirror in which the other's reflection appeared to the world. This biography makes a stupendous effort to disentangle these images from one another, but in the end the knot won't be loosened: they are joined not at the hip, but at the soul. The biography is absolutely splendid: intricate, deep, minutious in its details, brilliantly rendered, subtle, fast paced, and wholly satisfying in its results. That the book never does separate the yin from the yang is because of the nature of the creatures it addresses: one contains the other, just as surely as the other contains the one.Véra was the ultimate feminist while at the same time the self effacing servant of her genius husband. Did her (different) talents rank up there with his? Most probably, although she would deny this. She collected his words indiscriminantly, as if each phrase had great intrinsic value; every little scrap of paper became a motive for her archival attention and care. Nabokov depended on Véra for all practical things that life tossed his way (he was the typical absentminded professor) with the exception of the lovely young women who intercepted his bumbling march through this world. For these, and for a deeply threatening love affair he had during their 12th year of marriage, Véra demonstrated forbearance, but never tolerance. In this long and magnificent biography Stacy Shiff manages to transcent the historical paraphernalia of the Nabokov's tumultuous lives to reveal the elusive characterology and spirituality of this very odd couple. She deftly studies them directly and as reflections of each other, as ghosts and mirages as well as the flesh and bood beings who lived and grew and aged and died. The reader receives more than just an exquisitly crafted portrait-history of Véra and Vladimir; a bit of their soul is imparted also. Worth having, worth reading.
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Summary: Witty, subtle, perceptive, and elegantly written
Review: Literary biography rarely gets as good as this: a witty, subtle, perceptive, and elegantly written portrait. Wonderfully researched, Vera is also the product of a first-rate mind. How lucky Vera Nabokov is to draw Stacy Schiff as her biographer. I am simply in awe.
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Summary: A stunning look into the intricacies of marriage
Review: Stacy Schiff meets her challenge head on: how to write the biography of one-half of a duo that valued the right turn of phrase as much as anything. She succeds wonderfully. The book is written in a language that does enormous justice both to its main character and to Véra's beloved Nabokov. It gives many clues as to what made this extraordinary woman tick but ultimately it does not give any definite answers because probably none can be found. It leaves the reader with a yearning for those difficult times that gave birth to the émigré society from which the Nabokovs came but to which they didn't really belong. Difficult they may have been but what great literature and what amazing personalities emerged from them.
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Summary: A woman of mystery
Review: Stacy Schiff meets her challenge head on: how to write the biography of one-half of a duo that valued the right turn of phrase as much as anything. She succeds wonderfully. The book is written in a language that does enormous justice both to its main character and to Véra's beloved Nabokov. It gives many clues as to what made this extraordinary woman tick but ultimately it does not give any definite answers because probably none can be found. It leaves the reader with a yearning for those difficult times that gave birth to the émigré society from which the Nabokovs came but to which they didn't really belong. Difficult they may have been but what great literature and what amazing personalities emerged from them.
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Summary: An awesome job on a seemingly impossible task
Review: This is the book Nabokov fans have been waiting for, but suspected would never (COULD never) be written. From the opening sentences it's clear that Schiff has the stuff equal to her daunting task--to get behind the artfully constructed public face of two of the most brilliant, but most private, people ever to enter the public eye. Schiff does it with awesome research and a, by turns, witty, moving, penetrating, sometimes acerbic, but always admiring prose. The portrait of Vera, you feel, is definitive, but so, too, is the portrait of Vladimir--a portrait that points up the flaws and gaps in earlier depictions, like that of the dutifully plonking Boyd biographies with their laughable "interpretation" of Pale Fire. That Schiff is delineating the dynamic of a highly unique marriage (not just the two complex personalities that made up that marriage) makes her accomplishment seem all the more miraculous. Finally, Schiff's method is ultimately Nabovian in that she gives us a portrait of the master without peering at him directly: the book is Vladimir reflected in Vera's pale fire--which, as it turns out, is the best way to see him whole. Or, rather, to see them BOTH whole. After reading this book, it is impossible to speak of either Vladimir, or Vera, as a single entity, ever again.
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Summary: GORGEOUSLY WRITTEN AND BRILLIANTLY PUT TOGETHER
Review: This was a biography I found spellbinding as much for the force of its story as for the beauty of its language. There are hidden pleasures here as there are in Nabokov; each one makes you feel that a first-rate biographical intelligence is at work. And I can't say I've ever read a better portrait of Nabokov, anywhere. None of his chroniclers write with anything close to Schiff's style or sensitivity. Not to mention her insight, which is remarkable.
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