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Rating: 
Summary: Is there any meaning?
Review: A curious novel, a tale of "V's" attempts to find out about his deceased half-brother Sebastian Knight. V attempts to do this by analysis of Sebastian's novels, by tracking his movements, and by contacting people who knew him. All through the novel, V never really gets to the "real" Sebastian Knight - just when he thinks he gets close, he finds he is as far away as ever.The novel can be interpreted in many ways - for example, is "V" really "V" or is he in fact Sebastian, on a voyage of self-discovery? But my take on it was that Nabokov was undertaking a critique both of people who try to infer "facts" about authors from their works, and of the limits of biography. In a wider sense, it could I suppose be seen as a reflection of how much we really know about the people with whom we live our lives - can we ever know the "real them"? A challenging and interesting work, in which there is no resolution as such, only questions left floating in the reader's mind. Watch out for the clever word play and the delightful satire on Agatha Christie-like melodramas.
Rating: 
Summary: Caress the details, for there is nothing else!
Review: My English not being my mother language has attracted me to Nabokov. And I admire him enourmously.But this novel was almost a disappointment, because, though it is so good at times, the almost plotless tale reaches a climax of the futile and bore when (we are already somewhere in the middle of the book)he narrator, who is by then in search of a lady, indulges in a series of inane dialogues whose aim eluded me. And the eighteenth chapter is wonderful, though I disliked also the final chapters, this simulacrum of impetus and parody of revelation on the very point of dying.
Rating:
Summary: no batterflies please
Review: Nabokov intension, until he discovered for himself the wonderful world of pop-culture (cf. Lolita and Ada), was really to describe truth and beauty (see 'Luzhin's defense', 'Gift' etc.) in the tradition of the Old World, and play less with cheep riddles and collective phobias. His dealing with the issue of death, as in 'Ultima Thule' etc., appears also here; the last book written by Knight is, however, written about in a pale and uninspiring way (Nabokov could not make his vision clear?), and, surprisingly for Nabokov, is not free of commonplaces and dejavous. All in all the book is original and interesting, as nearly everything Nabokov wrote. And, by the way, the treatment of the relation narrator-genius (commonplace in itself, unfortunately) looks better than in Mann's Doctor Faustus, where it is taken quite heavily (one does not see the traces of the hammer blows). Side remark: the stars practice is really annoying: isn't there a way to write about books without grading them?
Rating:
Summary: Good lesser Vladimir
Review: Vladimir Nabokov is perhaps my very favorite author, and so I approached this work withthe mindset of "it must be at least good." It is. It contains the subtlety and puzzling qualities and droll humor of his great works and still manages to work in its own little bit of beauty. It also has its duller stretches, it lacks a real point, and it is more than vaguely pretentious, but nothing unforgivable. As his first full-length work in English, perhaps it should be treated more as an experiment in compositional workability than anything else.
The relative ease of reading this as compared to Nabokov's best, like 'Pale Fire' and 'Lolita,' may make it a good introduction to novices.
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