Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, stunning, very, very irritating.
Review: I have spent the summer drowning in Nabokovian puddles, but this autobiography is the least satisfactory yet. On the plus side it (naturally) contains some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read. The seamless flow from concrete detail, scrupulous description, misty nostalgia to philosophical speculation is dizzying and inspired. The chapter on the author's mother is quite possibly the most gorgeous piece of writing in the language, but my favorite is the melancholy portrait of his uncle, a fascinating, loveable, moving character who might have enriched a novel. The battle between the natural and the human worlds are convincingly balanced, with history swooping in for final victory.And yet Speak, Memory is fundamentally dislikeable. The tone grates: imagine a whole book written in the style of Nabokov's forewards - arrogant, didactic, humorless. That's what nearly kills it - the lack of Nabokovian playfulness. There are a couple of real-life events that are so shocking that they verge on farce, but in general the tone is reverent and uncritical, and the madness of Nabokov's greatest narrators has no place here. The young Nabokov is thoroughly dislikeable (but then so is the Nab of the forewards), 'something of a bully' as he admits, but the episode with his brother was shameful, disgusting, and made me not want to read one of his books again. I'll get over that, but it's says something that one finds that monster Humbert more sympathetic than his creator. Of course, the narrator here isn't unadulterated Nab; he's as much a creation as any of his characters. He's just not a very interesting one, neither insane nor funny. As Michael Wood suggests, the absences in this very word-, idea-, people- and event-heavy book are some kind of a failure. What we're left with is literature's most stunning prose poem since Woolf's To The Lighthouse, with a big black hole in the centre.
Rating: 
Summary: if you read no other Nabokov
Review: I honestly don't consider myself competent to judge whether Nabokov is one of the century's greatest writers. Like many of his contemporaries, much of his work is so obscure as to defy my comprehension, but I do very much like what I understand in Pale Fire and Lolita, both of which made the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the Century, and, of course, to read him is to be exposed to an English language and a prose style that one little knew existed. So I am more than willing to acknowledge that he was a singular and immense talent. It is altogether fitting then that his memoirs too should be unique. For the most part, Nabokov's mission here is literally to let his memory speak. In so doing he recreates late czarist Russia in loving, painstaking detail. While to the best of my knowledge Nabokov was never particularly identified with the anti-Communist émigré movement, this book is its own kind of indictment of the USSR. The case it lays out is not the political or the economic one but the historical and cultural one. As he says: My old (since 1917) quarrel with the Soviet dictatorship is wholly unrelated to any question of property. My contempt for the émigré who "hates the Reds" because they "stole" his money and land is complete. The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes. And finally: I reserve for myself the right to yearn after an ecological niche: ...Beneath the sky Of my America to sigh For one locality in Russia. The crimes of the commissars are without number and most are far greater than this, but this richly textured, impossibly specific and deeply moving memoir so brilliantly transports the reader to what seems to have been a wonderful and altogether innocent existence that to that list of crimes must be added the Bolsheviks utter destruction of this world. Even if you've never liked any of his other books, do yourself a favor and read this one. Even the passages that defy comprehension are beautiful. GRADE: A
Rating:
Summary: A book to read more than once.
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Speak, Memory. If you have an interest in Nabokov, Russia at the turn of the (last) century, exquisite writing, or the genre of biography/autobiography, you will most likely enjoy it too.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: If you are a fan of Nabokov, you just have to read this. If you are not, this is as good a place to start as any. Anyway what is extra special about it is this: Everybody knows that Nabokov is a fabulous prosateur, a master magician with language. But here we have on display, along with the language, and he's never been better, a truly incredible memory. It's like he told his memory to speak, and it did. There is very little he can not remember, and talk about, in that fine, exquisite detail we expect. When you read Nabokov, you always experience this thing where he is writing about some kind of event you have known or seen yourself and he dazzles you with the way he gets it so exactly right and you know you cannot do this. So for this reason it is not a great surprise to discover, as we do here, that he has been logging all that stuff in his memory since he was a baby. A wonderful book!
Rating:
Summary: A dioramic glimpse of a masterful author
Review: In this reflective gift to his wife, Nabokov employs his creative genius to both entertain the reader and to seemingly unburden his soul. Rich with catharsis, Speak, Memory reveals the sorrows of lost national identity. Simultaneously, Nabokov explores the many delights of his youth from butterflies to tennis matches with a constant stream of vivid images. In this autobiographical "verbal adventure," Nabokov delivers an amazing treasure which all writing enthusiasts should hasten to consume.
Rating:
Summary: excellent edition
Review: It is pointless for me to review this masterpiece. I would just like to say that this edition (Everyman's Library) is excellent, providing a well-written introduction and material usually not included in previous editions.
Rating:
Summary: Celebration
Review: It's hard to decide where to begin with - describing this 'autobiography' by Nabokov. I'd first say something about Nabokov beautifying his past - that a lot of the passages in this book read more like fiction than autobiography. Nabokov makes the purpose of his autobiography very clear: it is to trace the 'thematic design' of one's life - which is what seems to him to give autobiography meaning. If one reads this book carefully enough one sees how one image/incident/detail, etc. echoing one another throughout the book, in the lives of different individuals. In a way one should see it as a book of memoirs of Nabokov's family - how lives intersect and influence one another, and finally how we all seem to live under the same forces that dominate our lives - as much as his autobiography.
There's a couple of details that one cannot miss about the relationship between thematic design and memory: at the very end of the book Nabokov describes his wife, him and his son walking into a garden. Every detail is described as a part of the thematic design of the garden and finally, 'something in a scrambled picture--Find What the Sailor Has Hidden--that the finder cannot unsee once it has been seen'. It's all a discovery, through intense concentration, imagination, and artistic decisions. This summarizes Nabokov's method in perceiving and portraying his past. 'Speak, Memory' is also a celebration of the power of memory - of how it conjures the beauties of the past as a performance that ends in wild applause.
It might help if one recalls the original title of 'Speak, Memory' -- 'Conclusive Evidence' -- it is a collection of evidence for one's existence, instead of a recrod. I would not agree the narration is didatic or humorless - a careful look at the inter-illumination of details would very subtly suggest the opposite. Again I believed the readers have to pay close attention to the artistic statments in this book (even if they have not read any Nabokov - I hadnt when I read this book) before judging it. It's an enjoyable book at any rate and those who love beautiful writing will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: truly good autobiography of a fascinating life
Review: just look at nabakov ... whether you've read anything by him or not (I hadn't), you have to admit his life spanned such a fascinating era: born into russian upper class before the russian revolution, escaped to england, went to oxford (or cambridge, can't remember, read this a while ago), became literary giant... it's simply a great autobiography of a life full of interesting perspectives. read it.
Rating:
Summary: A spiral of life recalled and transformed
Review: Like some of the other reviewers who have posted here, tackling Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography is a daunting proposal. Yet, while Nabokov was no teacher in the conventional sense, I think he would have encouraged readers of this book to mull it over after completing it and find threads that tallied with the sensibilities of their own lives. This is a literary autobiography, which means its ultimate goals are elucidating the author's character, emotional construction and artistic development -- not communicating a straightforward story from birth forward. One of the major themes of Nabokov's life is the malleability of time itself in the grasp of human memory. He concedes at the outset that several episodes he relates in the book have had their particular details -- and Nabokov is almost Proustian when it comes to detail -- challenged by his sisters. What he is trying to establish is how memory can distort time by re-ordering, supressing and even enhancing important personal events of long ago. He makes no authorial claim to perfect recall. We are, in fact, forewarned that what follows may not be factually reliable. What we can rely on are the emotions those memories evoke in an older Nabokov and how they have shaped his perception of the world around him and sculpted the artistic sensibilities which guide his writing. Late in the book, Nabokov observes at length how a spiral resembles Hegel's model of historical dialectic -- thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis or, more simply put: point, counterpoint and a blending of the two which creates a new thesis and keeps the eternal dialogue spiraling into the future. Nabokov adopts the spiral as a model for his own dialectic of event, remembrance and incorporation of the combination of the two into his artistic being. It is as clear an explanation of how memory shapes art as you will ever likely find. The book is organized around Nabokov's memories of his boyhood and young adulthood. We see the Russian boy's enthusiasm for collecting butterflies and moths develop into a life's passion (Nabokov dedicated much of his adult life to lepidoptera studies and was a recognized expert in the field). We also see how this passion opens up the natural world to him and how it stirs the first thoughts of something greater underlying that observable universe. There are some unpleasant aspects to Nabokov's autobiography. The privileged son of Russian nobility and a graduate of Cambridge University, Nabokov radiates a haughty aristocratic sneer at times, an attitude certain to grate on American sensibilities (in Nabokov's defense, he loved his adopted homeland, the U.S.A., with unbridled passion and some of its democratic sensibilities in turn ultimately rubbed off on him). He summarily dismisses writers such as Gorky, Bulgakov and what he deems "regional" American writers (undoubtedly William Faulkner among them) who certainly equalled or surpassed his own merit as a writer. No one could ever accuse Nabokov of being a writer of "the people," which certainly sets him at odds with the intellectual milieu in which he lived and worked. I've made "Speak, Memory" sound far more rarified than it is. Nabokov has an earthy sense of humor and never takes himself too seriously. This is an excellent book for those struggling to find the elements of their own artistic vision among the scattered shards of their life's memories. It is a graceful, fluttering flight between light and shadow, fact and memory, artistic conformism and personal authenticity. In the end, any of us who aspire to create must choose and choose wisely. Nabokov did and this book is a living example of how we, as artists, as those who would remember with passion for a truth beyond fact, must make our own choices.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning, beautiful, poetic, but not for the general reader!
Review: Nabakov is indisputably one on of the greatest prose-stylists of the 20th century. Nabokov utilizes his full range of writing tricks, styles, and poetics to describe his life in "Speak, memory." Nabakov describes his youth in a spiral like fashion. Ironically, yet vividly, he emphasizes a lot on the little and seemingly insignificant things that we remember, despite being well traveled and cultured. Such as the first pen, crazy stewards, and annoying college room mates. However, this ain't a book to read in the bathtub, folks! Equip yourself with a dictionary. Otherwise, you may drown! It will take you a while, maybe the first fifty pages to get the hang of his writing. It has a foreign tune to it with very complex words. If you are patient then you will savor his dreamy-like way with words. However, a reader may be offended by Nabakov's personality reflected by "Speak, memory ". He is arrogant, pampered, and unstable. He never ever talked of the peasants before or during the Russian Revolution. He even hardly scratches the surface of his long stay and experience in America. It's hard to tell if he eschews events and feelings that are too foreign or offensive to him. Obviously, it may be hard to hold his hand when one examines his stubborn attitude and the way he thinks. ( Look at the reviews above ) But for literary aesthetes, one can hold his hand when cherishing his elegant, dreamy, rich, complex, insights and use of language.
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