Rating: 
Summary: Nabokov amuses himself
Review: This is a masturbatory fantasy. Nabokov has created his dream world: The United States and Russia are one country and everybody who's anybody speaks French, too; World War I never happened, let alone World War II; and Van Veen has a lifelong love affair with his cousin Ada (actually his sister), full of passion, yearning, intellectual stimulation, and the thrill of the forbidden, plus a soupcon of jealousy provided by Ada's full sister Lucette, who wants Van to love her, too, and finally kills herself for want of him, spicing Van's life with a touch of sweet remorse. Oh - I forgot to mention the voyeuristic lesbianism when Lucette describes her own affair with Ada, and their threesome. If this isn't the stuff of your dreams, you may find Nabokov's mandarin literary style a little heavy for the subject matter, like a g-string made of real cloth of gold.
Rating: 
Summary: A Haunting Summer Romance
Review: This tragic story of love and obsession is written as if it is the true life memoir of fictional character Van Veen. V.V. is a Russian-American aristocrat born to extreme wealth in the late 1800's on a fictional world called Antiterra. Antiterra is almost identical to Earth, except for minor details, such as the place names are different and some conveniences such as airplanes, telephones, and motion pictures were in existence as early as 1884. That fateful year of 1884 provides the novel with its chief building block. Our narrator spent that summer, his 15th, at his aunt's summer house, Ardis, where he and his 12 year old cousin Ada Veen ended up falling in love with the mad insatiable passion that is typical for teenagers. Shortly after falling in love, though, the pair learns that due to a much more complex family tree than either initially realized, they are actually brother and sister casting a tragic shadow over their intoxicating relationship. These facts are presented to us, although obscurely, within the first 30 pages of the 589 page book, so don't think that I have just given away any key plot points here. In fact, this novel is all about Van and Ada's refusal (or inability) to ever grow out of their idyllic, though incestuous, summertime romance. The summer of 1884 grows to haunt the rest of their lives, and this book for the most part is the story of that haunting. The story is remarkable and for those who end up getting emotionally involved in the story, it is the type of novel that will seep into your soul unlike just about any book you may ever read. Unfortunately, a highly complex writing style is likely to act a a very major hurdle that will prevent a lot of people from ever getting through the book. Nabokov fills his novel with many extremely long sentences, complex parentheticals, and a sometimes confusing chronological structure. If you aren't ready to pay attention to what you are reading, then this book is likely to simply confuse you to the point of frustration. Personally, I read this book while on a week-long beach vacation in Hawaii. It was the perfect setting, because my mind was gloriously free of distraction and I was able to spend the time necessary to digest what I was reading. Being on a beach, however, meant that I was not able to look up every single odd word I came across or investigate all the literary allusions the author included in the book. If you are reading about this book, you are sure to learn that the book is extremely dense with such allusions. I am happy to report that one need not get bogged down with tracking down such literary references in order to appreciate this book. To find out if the book is right for you, luckily, you only really have to read the first 3 or 4 chapters. The first chapter is typical of the author's densest most complex style. It is a great first chapter, but it will likely take much time and effort to fully comprehend. The second and third chapters are a bit more straightforward and are a very good representation of how most of the rest of the book reads. In my case, after reading the first chapter, I was drawn in because it was exactly the kind of complex writing I was looking for. There is a lot of French and Russian used throughout the book. In the Vintage paperback edition, there are helpful end notes that provide translations for most of the crucial foreign language passages. I found my knowledge of French to be quite helpful, though, because a lot of the incidental French is not translated. Luckily almost all the Russian in the book is translated in the text itself, so those passages ultimately are not a problem at all. Suffice it to say that this book is filled with literary wordplay and many puzzles to solve. If that is your cup of tea, then you are likely to love this book. Even if you do not pursue answers to all the literary puzzles presented in the book, you can still be rewarded with an emotionally complex epic tale that at the very least is going to provide you with some very serious food for thought. If you are like me, however, this book will also provide you with one of the most moving and emotionally harrowing stories you may ever come across. I can't remember feeling so satisfied after finishing a book, nor can I ever remembering finishing a book so ready to re-read it. I recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Nabokov's only sloppy work
Review: Try as I might, I simply cannot get myself to enjoy or even appreciate this book. I am a longtime Nabokov fan and have read most of his books as well as several biographies and literary studies on the man. The only conclusion that I can reach is that, in this novel that followed the huge success of Lolita, Nabokov somehow lost his self-critical facility and wrote it faster and with far fewer drafts, convinced by the critics' pronounements that he was a genius (and he certainly was) and hence couldn't go wrong. This is what many of his critics and academic specialists say about this book - that it is sloppy and indulgent, and certainly nothing like his best work - and for once I completely agree with them. Now a lot Nabokov devotees make fancy arguments about how this is his ultimate acheivement, a kind of cryptic Finnegin's Wake that engages the reader into a curious notion of time, etc etc. Well, apart from my own idolisation of this fabulous writer, I really did not see anything to justify this in this book, unless you like such banalities as "I don't analyse, I describe" or Van Veen putting on sunglasses and wondering if the tint influences his sense of time. Alas, a simpler explanation is that, in a fit of self-intoxication, the Nab got lazy with this book and simply blew it. With all due respect to one of the greatest writers of the 20C, this book is too long, many of the scenes ring hollow, and the story is really strange. Not recommended.
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