Vladimir Nabokov

'Nabokov can move you to laughter in the way that masters can - to laughter that is near to tears' Guardian Lev Ganin is a young officer sharing a boarding house in Berlin with a host of Russian émigrés. Alone in his room, he dreams of his first love, Mary. Awash with memories of youth and idyllic scenes of pre-Revolution Russia, Ganin becomes convinced that Mary is in fact the wife of a fellow-boarder, due to arrive at this very house soon. He longs for her arrival, when he can whisk her away and leave everything behind ...

Mary

akshita

"In those first days of love-making they kissed so much that Mary’s lips grew swollen, and her neck, so warm under her hair-bow, bore tender vampire marks. She was an amazingly cheerful girl, who laughed not so much from mockery as from sheer humor. She loved jingles, catchwords, puns and poems. A song would stick in her head for two or three days, then it would be forgotten and a new one would take possession."

"The wallpaper was white with bluish roses. Sometimes, in semidelirium, one would fashion people’s profiles out of these roses or wander up and down with one’s eyes, trying not to touch a single flower or a single leaf on the way, finding gaps in the pattern, wriggling through, doubling back, landing in a blind alley and starting one’s journey through the luminous maze all over again."

"when music plays at the very moment when one is doing something quite ordinary, such as walking from a table to pay at the bar, and gives an inward dancelike quality to one’s simple movement, transforming it into a significant and immortal gesture."

What is falling in first love like? A memory etched in senses for decades, description of love and walking, weather and misery. Of travelling back into happier days of homeland, to escape desperation both physical and of mind. Oh my God such beautiful storytelling. I understand now why he is so widely acclaimed. 

Mary

Reviews

Highlights