Penguin Moderns: Vladimir Nabokov and Wendell Berry

Lance by Vladimir Nabokov **** (#49)
I will begin this review by saying that of the work of Nabokov’s which I have read in the past, I have not enjoyed it anywhere near as much as most people seem to.  I had never encountered his short stories before picking up Lance.  All of these ‘dazzling stories of obsession, mania and an extra-terrestrial nightmare feature all of the wit, dexterity and inventiveness that are the hallmarks of Nabokov’s genius’, and were published between 1931 and 1951.  ‘The Aurelian’ was originally written in Russian, and appears in translation here by Peter Pertzov in collaboration with the author.  The other two stories – ‘Signs and Symbols’ and ‘Lance’ – were first written in English.

The three tales collected here are all rather sad.  ‘The Aurelian’ follows protagonist Paul Pilgram, who has taken over the running of his parents’ shop in Berlin.  Of Pilgram, Nabokov writes: ‘… as a boy he already feverishly swapped specimens with collectors, and after his parents died butterflies reigned supreme in the dim little shop.’  He is an entomologist, who knows so much about species all around the world, but has never travelled farther than Berlin’s suburbs.  His wish is to see butterflies living in their natural habitat.  I will say no more lest I give any of the story away, but suffice to say, I very much enjoyed reading it.  It is the first time in which  I have ever felt fully engaged with Nabokov’s work.

The second haunting story, ‘Signs and Symbols’, takes as its focus a suicidal young man living in a sanatorium, and the effects which he has upon his family: ‘The last time their son had tried to take his life, his method had been, in the doctor’s words, a masterpiece of inventiveness; he would have succeeded, had not an envious fellow patient thought he was learning to fly – and stopped him.  What he really wanted to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape.’  I found such descriptions touching and evocative, and indeed, this style of writing and character reveal threads through all three tales in Lance.  The stories are very human, and I now have an interest to read more of Nabokov’s work in the near future.

The third titular story was the only one in this collection which I did not much enjoy.  However, that may be because it is so firmly rooted in science fiction, something which I am not at all a fan of.  I found it interesting enough to read, but it was certainly peculiar.  Had this surprising collection featured only the first two stories, I certainly would have given it a five star rating.

 

Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer by Wendell Berry ***
The fiftieth, and final, Penguin Modern is Wendell Berry’s Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer, which features two essays.  The title essay was published for the first time in Harper’s magazine in 1987, and the second – ‘Feminism, the Body and the Machine’, which provides a reflection upon it – in 1990.

In the first essay, as is evident in its title, Berry argues his case for writing ‘in the day time, without electric light’, and with only paper and a pencil.  He says, of his decision: ‘I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work.’  He also points out that he very much enjoys the collaborative experience which he shares with his wife, who types up his work on a Royal Standard typewriter: ‘Thus (and I think this is typical of present-day technological innovation), what would be superseded would be not only something, but somebody.  In order to be technologically up-to-date as a writer, I would have to sacrifice an association that I am dependent upon and that I treasure.’

This first essay ends with a transcription of several responses received after its publication, and Berry’s quite witty response.  In the second, and more extended response essay, Berry writes in a measured way of those who chose to send letters to him, and the overriding view that he was both exploiting and oppressing his wife by getting her to type his work.  Here, he reflects: ‘That feminists or any other advocates of human liberty and dignity should resort to insult and injustice is regrettable.  It is also regrettable that all of the feminist attacks on my essay implicitly deny the validity of two decent and probably necessary possibilities: marriage as a state of mutual help, and the household as an economy.’

I found this short collection easy to read, and found that Berry argues his various points succinctly, although perhaps a little briefly at times, throughout.  His reasoning, in some ways, feels quite ahead of its time.  He touches upon many themes here, from materialism and relationships to technology and values.  Berry’s essays have such a nice message at their heart: ‘My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can.  In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed.  And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.’

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Favourite Books of 2018

Another year has come to an end. 2018 has been a crazy busy year and I barely managed to squeeze in 50 books, quite a few being under 100 pages. Although I read significantly less compared to past years, the books that kept me company in 2018 were primarily books I thoroughly enjoyed, which is a big win for me.

Since the ‘bad’ books were so few and since I’d like to focus on the more positive aspects of 2018, I decided to compile a list of 10 of my most favourite reads of 2018. They were not all 5 star reads, but all of them managed to amaze me in one way or another and stayed engraved in my heart and memory. With no further ado, my favourite books of 2018 were the following:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Whatever I say about this book will be too little, any words I choose will be too insuficient to fully express my love for this book. I read Pachinko early on in the year, in January, and it quickly became one of the best books I’ve read in the past few years. It’s a family saga, a chronicle of the life and tribulations of a Korean family as they set foot on Japan after the war in hopes of a brighter future and the harsh reality that they have to face every single day. Through this novel, I learned a lot about the zainichi, the Korean expats that reside in Japan. One wonderful thing about this book is that, although it focuses on the zainichi and their experiences, the everyday struggles and hardships they go through can extend to an international scale and resonate with refugees and expats from any and every country. This book is much more than a story, a tale of loss and family, of race and nationality, of love. It is a life lesson and I really feel a much more enriched person after reading it.

Lullaby by Leila Slimani

Lullaby (Chanson Douce in the original French and The Perfect Nanny in the US edition) is a brilliantly crafted thriller and suspense novel that keeps you glued to every page until you reach the very last one. After hearing so much about it, I finally purchased it at the Glasgow airport during my visit in May. Its premise is rather terrifying, as it starts with a young couple finding both their children dead. Even though the novel begins with the outcome and then goes back and recounts the events leading up to this horrible event, the suspense is ever-present and Slimani’s writing is utterly captivating.

 

The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov

I had wanted to read Nabokov’s works for the longest time, and even though I owned Lolita, the timing was never right for me to dive into its conflicting world. Instead, I came across this short novella in its Greek translation (where the cover is from, as I much prefered it to the English language covers I found) and it truly enchanted me. Nabokov’s writing is smart and witty and he manages to create a very interesting story through which he can critically comment on the society of his time (which, sadly, isn’t radically different from that of today), while also making the reader wonder what really happened and what was a figment of the protagonist’s imagination.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Reading Convenience Store Woman was such an experience for me. I always enjoy reading about people who are considered ‘outsiders’ and who don’t want to conform to the society’s rules, especially when said rules go against who one is as a person. The matter of having a ‘respectable’ job and panning out your life according to certain standards is a very important one, especially since things have started changing in recent years, and people resort to non-traditional professions more and more. Murata’s protagonist is a Japanese woman who started working at a convenience store part-time but still finds herself in the same job years later. Despite her family and acquaintances urging her to find a ‘real job’, she feels conflicted, since she should abide by society’s rules, yet she feels oddly comfortable exactly where she is. It’s a novel that will certainly resonate with many young people today, myself included.

Old Magic by Marianne Curley

To be quite honest, Old Magic is a book I would never think of picking up (at least as an adult), and yet here I am putting it in my list of favourites for 2018. My boyfriend, who never reads, had once told me that he had one favourite book he had read as a teen, and he gifted it to me so I would see what he liked back then. I was infinitely skeptical, but started reading it immediately, as I was in need of some very light reading at the time, and I just couldn’t put it down. Written by an Australian author, the book is about a young witch, her struggle to be accepted at her school since she comes from a ‘weird’ family, a journey back in time and, of course, romance. I can’t quite pinpoint why I liked this book so much – it reminded me of the fantasy books I used to read as a kid/teenager and it made me so nostalgic. I truly enjoyed reading Old Magic and I think I will try being more open to books, even if they initially seem like something I would never pick up for myself.

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley

A book of essays on a wide variety of topics, but mostly focusing on being a woman writer, a female geek in this (mostly) male-dominated field, something which Hurley proves is very difficult yet possible and rewarding. I haven’t read Hurley’s fiction, yet through reading her essays, some of them being quite personal ones, I felt a deep appreciation for her work and her craft. Some of the stories she told were funny, others empowering and others thoroughly moving, especially those regarding her initial financial difficulties and her health problems. Usually I’m a bit weary when it comes to feminist texts, but this one totally fascinated me and I will certainly seek out Hurley’s fiction in the future.

Το Τέλος της Πείνας (The End of Hunger) by Lina Rokou

Once in a while I stumble upon contemporary Greek literary works that are true gems. The End of Hunger is one such example, and, sadly, not (yet) translated in English. The story revolves around a young woman who lives in Athens and, searching for ways to find some money, she starts selling parts of her body to a passing street seller. She sells him her teeth, her spleen, her old diaries and he still asks for more. Rokou’s writing is whimsical and poetic and absolutely beautiful. Her descriptions of the nonsensical and surrealistic events that occur to her protagonist are lyrical and imbued with the right dose of emotion. One could say that this entire selling process described is nothing but the process of falling in love, of giving away every last bit of your self to the other person and then ending up feeling completely empty by the end of it. This kind of blend of surrealism with reality is precisely my cup of tea and I truly hope this book gets translated soon so more people can discover the beauty of it.

A Biography of a Chance Miracle by Tanja Maljartschuk

Another gem of a book which I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did. I read A Biography in September and have already posted a full review of it here in case you would like to read more about it (and you should!). Maljartschuk is a Ukrainian author who created a whimsical and thoroughly witty tale full of social satire, magical realism and the cruelty of life. Lena, the main character, always has a tendency to help others and when she gets into university she decides to open her own business selling miracles. The writing is superb, and the translation by Zenia Tompkins excellent.

 

La lettrice scomparsa (The Lost Reader) by Fabio Stassi

Another fabulous read, not yet available to the English speaking world. I read its Greek translation (The Lost Reader is my literal translation of the title) and was utterly fascinated. Originally written in Italian, The Lost Reader is a mystery like no other. The protagonist is an unemployed teacher who opens a booktherapy business, in which he recommends the most fitting book to his patients according to the problems they have, as he’s a firm believer of literature’s healing powers. While trying to get used to this new job and everything that it entails, an old lady from his apartment complex suddenly vanishes and he embarks on a quest to find her and uncover the secrets hidden behind her disappearance. An ode to literature, an inventive mystery and witty quotes hidden in almost every page – what’s there not to love?

The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang

Last but not least, I have a book I read during the last days of December, proving that it’s never too late in the year to discover a wonderful book. The Black Tides of Heaven belongs to the recently invented silkpunk subgenre, as it is set an Asian-inspired fantasy world. The first of JY Yang’s short novellas set in this world, this book focuses on one of the twins that we get introduced to in the beginning of the story (and its twin novella focuses on the other twin sibling’s story). I adored the world and all of its fantasy elements and I found Yang’s writing fabulous. I’d like this to be a full novel just so I could stay more in this world with these fascinating characters, and that’s why I read its twin novella, The Red Threads of Fortune, immediately after. The fantasy elements I loved were all there, and even enhanced, but I was very disappointed in other parts of the story, a topic which I might discuss in a different post.

It was kind of difficult to choose only 10 of the books I read in 2018 to feature in this post, but I think I chose the ones that left the biggest impression on me and the ones which I thoroughly enjoyed reading, regardless of their literary merit. I hope my reading in 2019 will focus more on quality over quantity again, and I can’t wait to share my reads with you in the new year, as well 🙂

Have you read any of those books, and if yes, what did you think of them? What were your favourite reads of 2018? Let me know in the comments below.

 

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One From the Archive: ‘Speak, Memory’ by Vladimir Nabokov ***

‘Speak, Memory’ (Everyman’s Library Edition)

I have never read any of Nabokov’s fiction before, but when I saw this book on a ReadItSwapIt list and read its blurb, I thought that it sounded too good to miss.  I think that it is an interesting idea to begin reading a particular author’s oeuvre with a volume of autobiography, and it has certainly made me intrigued to read some of his fiction in future.

Speak, Memory covers the period between 1903 and 1940.  I make no bones about the fact that the book is written intelligently, but at first this style does feel as though it has been rather overdone. Some of Nabokov’s writing is stunning, but at times it did sound rather pretentious.  I have formed the general idea from reading reviews of his novels (mainly those of Ada and Lolita) that this is a general element of his style.  I felt that Nabokov’s prose did even out as it went along, and once I was used to his turns of phrase, it became eminently more readable.

At first, it felt as though Nabokov has essentially crafted a series of memory fragments, none of which are really connected, into a book.  For me, this gave the entirety rather a fractured feel.  After the first couple of chapters had passed, however, I did find that some of the later memories were connected – on rather a fragile string at times, it must be said.  Some of them were incredibly memorable – never, for example, will I be able to forget the rather disgusting way in which he talks about killing moths and butterflies for his collection – but sadly, not all of the fragments were.

I had rather an issue with the way in which the book was not sorted into chronological order.  It jumps back and forth so that Nabokov is a whole host of different ages in quick succession – three, six and three again.  Whilst I suppose it didn’t matter on the whole, it made it rather difficult to gauge how the author had grown into his own character. The format was an interesting one, but I can’t help thinking that I would have enjoyed it more had it had more of a structured and traditional manner about it.

Perhaps I should have mentioned at the outset that I am a self-confessed Russian history nerd.  It goes without saying really, then, that I found the social history – Russia’s military campaigns abroad, the forming of the First Parliament, and the vast divide between poverty and wealth, for example – fascinating.  The sense of place which Nabokov captured throughout was stunning.  He has made me want to go rushing back to beautiful St Petersburg on the first plane, which can only be a positive thing.

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One From the Archive: ‘Mary’ by Vladimir Nabokov **

First published in May 2014.

Another book which I borrowed from the lovely Cambridge Central Library, determined as I am to really enjoy at least one of Vladimir Nabokov’s books.  I decided upon borrowing it that if Mary, like Speak, Memory and Lolita, was a three star read or below, I would not go out of my way to read any more of Nabokov’s books.  Surprise, surprise then, that Mary was only worthy of a two star review in my opinion. 

I had no idea what the novel was about when I first picked it up, but I believed that as the work had been translated in collaboration with the author, it would at least be relatively true to the original.  The novel begins in Berlin, in a pension which was ‘both Russian and nasty’, and which hosts inhabitants as diverse as a Russian poet and two ballet dancers who are ‘both as giggly as women’.  Mary, the titular character, is the wife of Aleksey Alfyorov.  As I have found before with his work, the way in which Nabokov crafts his prose is lovely, but the conversations between his characters often feel stiff, awkward and unnatural.  The descriptions throughout are neither as grand, nor as frequent as they are in Lolita, and the characters never quite cross the line into feeling like real, rather than imagined, beings.  Like Lolita, the novel is almost entirely fixated upon relationships, sexual desire, and frustration.  The story did not grip me at first, and whilst it does become marginally more interesting as one reaches the halfway point or so, it soon becomes a little dull again.  The uneven plot and abrupt ending have not allowed me to award Mary more than two stars, and on reflection, I feel that even that is a little generous.

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Flash Reviews (29th May 2014)

‘The Whole Story and Other Stories’ by Ali Smith (Penguin)

The Whole Story and Other Stories by Ali Smith ****
Merely to be a gushing Ali Smith fangirly, I thought that I would begin this review by saying that it is really cool to open a library book written by someone so prolific and to see ‘local author’ scrawled on the front page.  If you had not guessed from this, I adore Smith’s quirky writing and creative stories, and she is certainly one of my favourite authors.

Before I begin each one of Smith’s short story collections, I know that I will very much enjoy every single tale which has been included within its pages, often for very different reasons.  As I very much – and rather predictably – loved or very much enjoyed every story in The Whole Story and Other Stories, I thought that I would jot down a few thoughts about each story, and the reasons as to why I liked them so much.

– ‘The Universal Story’: I loved the conversational stream-of-consciousness style; the way in which Smith describes how one can adore books and the promise of treasures in secondhand bookshops; one man’s admiration for The Great Gatsby, and the collection of copies of the novel.
– ‘Gothic’: the personification of personality traits; the growth of the story’s protagonist.
– ‘Being Quick’: the use of the reader as a character of sorts; the use of two different first person narrators; the fact that the couple who feature as the protagonists are nameless.
– ‘May’: an original idea; I have read this story several times before and still find its beauty striking.
– ‘Paradise’: the use of very long but perfectly constructed sentences; the imagery which Smith builds.
– ‘Erosive’: the sheer number of characters and the way in which they were introduced so seamlessly.
– ‘The Book Club’: the structure, which cleverly told both a present day story and a backstory.
– ‘Believe Me’: the skill and tightness of the conversation between the protagonists.
– ‘Scottish Love Songs’: the very contemporary style of the prose.
– ‘The Shortlist Season’: thoughtful and urgent.
– ‘The Start of Things’: the dual perspective of the same event.

Please, if you have not done so before, go and pick up one of Ali Smith’s books.  Whether you read a novel, a short story collection or a work of non-fiction, she is a novelist who is well worth discovering.

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Mary by Vladimir Nabokov **
Another book which I borrowed from the lovely Cambridge Central Library, determined as I am to really enjoy at least one of Vladimir Nabokov’s books.  I decided upon borrowing it that if Mary, like Speak, Memory and Lolita, was a three star read or below, I would not go out of my way to read any more of Nabokov’s books.  Surprise, surprise then, that Mary was only worthy of a two star review in my opinion.

I had no idea what the novel was about when I first picked it up, but I believed that as the work had been translated in collaboration with the author, it would at least be relatively true to the original.  The novel begins in Berlin, in a pension which was ‘both Russian and nasty’, and which hosts inhabitants as diverse as a Russian poet and two ballet dancers who are ‘both as giggly as women’.  Mary, the titular character, is the wife of Aleksey Alfyorov.  As I have found before with his work, the way in which Nabokov crafts his prose is lovely, but the conversations between his characters often feel stiff, awkward and unnatural.  The descriptions throughout are neither as grand, nor as frequent as they are in Lolita, and the characters never quite cross the line into feeling like real, rather than imagined, beings.  Like Lolita, the novel is almost entirely fixated upon relationships, sexual desire, and frustration.  The story did not grip me at first, and whilst it does become marginally more interesting as one reaches the halfway point or so, it soon becomes a little dull again.  The uneven plot and abrupt ending have not allowed me to award Mary more than two stars, and on reflection, I feel that even that is a little generous.

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‘Sputnik Sweetheart’ by Haruki Murakami (Vintage)

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami ****
I have wanted to read this novel for about five years, ever since one of the rather beautiful quotes from it was acted out as an audition piece on drama school-based ‘Nearly Famous’, one of my favourite television programmes.  Sputnik Sweetheart follows three characters: aspiring novelist Sumire, Miu – the woman whom Sumire surprises herself by falling in love with – and K, our male narrator.  A love triangle of sorts soon ensues; K is in love with Sumire, two years his junior, and Sumire treats him more like a friend and almost prophetic teacher than as someone whom she is interested in.

The one problem which I tend to have with translated Japanese fiction is that the conversations can sometimes feel a little lacklustre and void of emotion.  I’m not really sure why this tends to happen (can anyone enlighten me?), but the problem is sadly present in Sputnik Sweetheart.  In the grand scheme of things however, the prose was often so lovely that the conversational patterns were somewhat outweighed.  Sputnik Sweetheart was not at all as I had expected it to be, but it was both engaging and compelling, and twists and turns were taken which made it an intriguing work of mystery.  The three protagonists were all well developed and believably constructed, and I now want to read more of Murakami’s work.  I shall leave you with this beautiful quote, which I hope will encourage everyone who has not done so already to pick up this peculiar but memorable novel:

“And it came to me then.  That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits.  From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere.  When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together.  Maybe even open our hearts to each other.  But that was only for the briefest moment.  In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude.  Until we burned up and became nothing.”

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‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov ***

‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov (Penguin)

On reflection, it was possibly a touch controversial to start reading Lolita whilst on a train into London, but I had been looking forward to reading it for such a long time, and since I finally had a copy of it upon my to-read shelves, I thought the journey offered me ample opportunity to begin.  Before beginning his most famous novel, I had only read one of Nabokov’s works, Speak, Memory.  This gave me the impression that Lolita would be just as intelligently written, and it certainly is.

I am sure that everyone knows what Lolita is about, so I shall just summarise the beginning of the plot.  A college professor named Humbert Humbert, who seems to do very little work throughout the novel, travels to New England and falls in love with the daughter of the woman who runs the house in which he stays, the pre-pubescent Delores Haze, whom he knows as Lolita.  The opening passage was one which I knew off by heart, and I love the importance which is given to Lolita’s name:

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

Now, I admit that the novel sounds a little seedy, but the way in which Nabokov has crafted the story allows the reader to be swept into the tale, almost understanding Humbert’s rather questionable actions in consequence – a very odd thing indeed.  The entirety of the book is narrated by Humbert, which allows us a glimpse into even his dirtiest of thoughts.  As Nabokov himself did in Speak, Memory, Humbert feels pretentious and rather full of himself, but once begun, his story is a difficult one not to want to read to its end.  Nabokov’s prose is opulent – entirely overdone at times, but he certainly does not write in a forgettable style.  I really did not like Humbert as a protagonist, and my dislike of him increased as the novel went on.  The more I read of him, the more I saw that he was a real creep – the kind of person whom I would probably run away from in real life.  Although he was, of course, so necessary to the story, it felt to me as though his presence was rather overdone at times.

Throughout, Lolita felt rather hazy, more of an ethereal figure than a tangible being.  She only really seemed to come to life at around a third of the way through, which must have been Nabokov’s intention all along.  Saying this, I far preferred the first part of the novel to the rest of it.  The relationship portrayed between Lolita and Humbert becomes really quite stifling after this point.

On reading Lolita, I can understand quite clearly how so much controversy surrounded it upon its publication, but it is also possible to see how it is an incredibly important work of literature.  It approaches one of the most taboo situations, which is heavily frowned upon and the circumstances of which are, indeed, illegal in many countries, head-on.  I did found the novel rather sleazy in places, and some of the euphemisms really did make me cringe.  In consequence, t was really quite difficult for me to decide how to rate Lolita.  I admired the writing and Nabokov’s telling of such a story, but I would not really say that it was a novel which I liked, as such.  Personally, I feel that it is a book which is better to be revered than loved, for Nabokov’s rather brave portrayal of such a forbidden relationship.  I must admit that I found the entirety rather underwhelming, and it was both as I thought it would be, and entirely different to my expectations too.

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‘Speak, Memory’ by Vladimir Nabokov ***

‘Speak, Memory’ (Everyman’s Library Edition)

I have never read any of Nabokov’s fiction before, but when I saw this book on a ReadItSwapIt list and read its blurb, I thought that it sounded too good to miss.  I think that it is an interesting idea to begin reading a particular author’s oeuvre with a volume of autobiography, and it has certainly made me intrigued to read some of his fiction in future.

Speak, Memory covers the period between 1903 and 1940.  I make no bones about the fact that the book is written intelligently, but at first this style does feel as though it has been rather overdone. Some of Nabokov’s writing is stunning, but at times it did sound rather pretentious.  I have formed the general idea from reading reviews of his novels (mainly those of Ada and Lolita) that this is a general element of his style.  I felt that Nabokov’s prose did even out as it went along, and once I was used to his turns of phrase, it became eminently more readable.

At first, it felt as though Nabokov has essentially crafted a series of memory fragments, none of which are really connected, into a book.  For me, this gave the entirety rather a fractured feel.  After the first couple of chapters had passed, however, I did find that some of the later memories were connected – on rather a fragile string at times, it must be said.  Some of them were incredibly memorable – never, for example, will I be able to forget the rather disgusting way in which he talks about killing moths and butterflies for his collection – but sadly, not all of the fragments were.

I had rather an issue with the way in which the book was not sorted into chronological order.  It jumps back and forth so that Nabokov is a whole host of different ages in quick succession – three, six and three again.  Whilst I suppose it didn’t matter on the whole, it made it rather difficult to gauge how the author had grown into his own character. The format was an interesting one, but I can’t help thinking that I would have enjoyed it more had it had more of a structured and traditional manner about it.

Perhaps I should have mentioned at the outset that I am a self-confessed Russian history nerd.  It goes without saying really, then, that I found the social history – Russia’s military campaigns abroad, the forming of the First Parliament, and the vast divide between poverty and wealth, for example – fascinating.  The sense of place which Nabokov captured throughout was stunning.  He has made me want to go rushing back to beautiful St Petersburg on the first plane, which can only be a positive thing.