Reviews and Comments

I read this book about 15 years ago and am reviewing random books I read a while ago in order to create a body of reviews on the site. Ada or Ardor is an interesting book, although probably (almost certainly) not the best book to start with if you intend to read multiple Nabokov books. I think I read that he specifically intended to shake off the insufficiently dedicated with the somewhat confusing first chapter. It is the third in an implicit trilogy of sex-perversion novels, preceded by Lolita and Pale Fire, and has the most unusual setting; Lolita can and probably should be interpreted as happening in the real world, insofar as any fictional world can be so interpreted, and Pale Fire could be in an alternate universe or could be the ramblings of an insane person. Ada is definitely in an alternate universe, where Russia is in America and we are all together goo goo g'joob. The overt plot concerns itself with an incestuous romance among noble Russmericans who engage in the sort of dissolute lifestyle commonly engaged in by a more-or-less openly corrupt upper class in the late 19th/early twentieth style; lots of affairs, lots of gambling, visits to prostitution dens, and so forth. The thematic plot is memory; I won't spoil anything intentionally, but childhood nostalgia is intertwined with the sex, along with a lot of regret about unfortunate choices involving now-dead relatives and also a large overt/covert commentary/plot point about access to the 'real world' in a sort of spiritualist way (late 19th/early 20th century is definitely a thematic theme and this stuff about our world had a strong tinge of that to me; I have seen this book mentioned in academic reviews of science fiction so it seems to have given a science fiction vibe to some people but I interpret it in a generically spiritual and specifically Spiritualist way.) It's Nabokov's longest book and possibly his most self-indulgent - if you like Nabokov, read it; if not, skip; if you don't know whether you like him, he has several shorter and easier books with which you can make up your mind. I was basically down with reading it, and enjoyed it, but there was a dash of completism in my motivation.

Delightfully nutty book - a basically anonymous narrator somewhere in Ireland who has done some things which might lead one to want to remain somewhat anonymous; after a benign youth in which his leg was broken on his behalf, he becomes a benign adult who only wants to engage in a little thievery here and there. He and his untrustworthy associate go to relief a house of the valuables in it when suddenly our hero finds himself in a very unusual place. He encounters two policemen at a one dimensional house who tell him about some interesting things like very pointy daggers, the dangers of allowing your identity to flow into bicycles and vice versa, and so forth. Our hero wants to maintain a relationship with his bicycle but the problem with the leg can be unhelpful in that regard. Ultimately a lot of silly stuff happens, with or without the collaboration of his fellow one legged unsavory ruffians who all also are trying to minimize associations with the titular policemen, until the astonishing revelations of the ending. If you enjoy this book, move on to At Swim-Two-Birds by the same author as soon as you can, because that one is also delightful.

Deserves to be up there with Animal Farm and 1984, which seem much more popular in the public mind. The nonfictional context for why the author felt motivated to write those two other books. It seems like there has been a long pro-war vein among conservatives, and plenty of antiwar books on the left; I have read and enjoyed examples from both, but Orwell is one of the people who is both leftwing and happy to endorse violence. Very different feeling in this book than in, for example, many of Kurt Vonnegut's stories. I don't mean to take a position here since I haven't fought in such a war, but it is definitely interesting to see two authors discuss a similar time frame (midcentury antifascist violence) with very different points of view, while still being broadly on the same side of the political spectrum. Favorite anecdote from the book: Orwell visits the Sagrada Familia which he feels is so ugly that he wishes it had been blown up like all the other Spanish churches in areas controlled by the leftist militias. Unfortunately for him, it had been exempted since it was such a fine example of forward looking architecture...