Reviews
Literally spent three years trying to find this book and (again) it was worth it. This 100% should be the Nabokov book that gets all the hype, and we are fake for not making that happen.
first few lines are iconic; nabokov excels here where he puts his characters in difficult moral positions, he shades the dailiness of cruelty and manipulation really well (details like Margot inconsequentially describing the wrong colours in the room to Albinus go hard), and he never winces in his depiction of complete lust-driven callousness; maybe because of the wont of contemporary literature i found myself wanting some degree of nuance, like maybe Margot doesn't need to be a "vulgar Berlin girl" a la devil-adjacent femme fatale, maybe Albinus doesn't need to be the antihero who casts off his lovely wife and dead child, maybe Rex doesn't need to be the heinous writer-lover who inexplicably spends his days tormenting Albinus in the last quarter of the book
