This begins as a parody of the Russian novel and ends as a review
of itself. The 500-odd pages in between chart the fortunes of
Adelaida (Ada) and Ivan (Van), two incestuous lovers who are really
Nabokov's excuse for a last grand stylistic firework show before
his death seven years later. I was introduced to it by quotation -
'The toot-toot of the two-two to Toulose' being offered as the most
untranslatable line conceivable. Some time later, I decided to
search for Nabokov's untranslatable train. Quel horaire! There is
no 'two-two to Toulouse', although there is a 'two-to-two', of
which Nabokov, who knew everything, must have been aware. His
decision to excise that surplus 'to' is answer enough to those who
would charge this novel with an excess bordering on self-parody.
Review by LAWRENCE NORFOLK, author of The Pope's Rhinoceros (Kirkus
UK)
Written in mischievous and magically flowing prose, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle - Nabokov's other great love story - offers even more sexual and imaginative surprises than Lolita. A romance that follows Ada from her first childhood meeting with Van on his uncle's country estate, in a 'dream-bright' America, through eighty years of rapture, Nabokov's 'longest, richest, most ambitious novel' also becomes, as Brian Boyd says, a great many other things: 'myth, fairy tale, utopian idyll, family chronicle, personal memoir, historical romance, erotic catalogue ... picture gallery and filmic folly'.
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