Mary

If ever discussing Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, the conversation might inevitably turn towards Nobakov. One of the holy trinity of Russian writers, Nabokov, in "Mary", encompasses a whole array of human emotions. I don't want to give away the ending, but the impact is compounded in the final pages. Masterfully written, it keeps you turning pages to see what happens. It didn't turn out like I imagined, but I was not disappointed. Conversely, instead of being let down, my life went through a paradigm shift. Not a lot of books have done that to me, but this book is a rarity indeed.

Putting my obsession for Nabokov and for first novels in general aside, reading this was still pure bliss. Sometimes narrative breaks for the author to sneak in some philosophical musing about memory, but somehow it fits. Immature writer syndrome, I suppose, which i've caught in my own work.It is a book about first love, and losing her, and then finding her again, but engaged to another man, who's not half the man you are. Nabokov questions how much you're in love with only the memory, and whether finding the flesh and blood girl again will ever fill the hole that your memory and desire have dug.Makes interesting reading next to Martin Amis' first work, The Rachel Papers.

First published under the title Mashenka, Mary is a lucid trip in and out of a man's fantasy. It is comic, despondent, and filled with illuminating details- the hole in a sock, the old hand that looks like a crinkled old leaf, ribbons. Each detail evokes, arouses the smell of memories. All the author has to do is insert an image into future narrative passages and this reader finds himself seemingly lost in time, remembering what the character remembers, in full color. This book hangs around for a while.

If this book were to come out today, with perhaps a modern setting, it would be a best-seller. A thoughtful, nostalgic and fun coming-of-age novel with an excellent cast of characters.

This is, to be sure, minor Nabokov, but it's a wonderful book nonetheless--funny, moving, and (of course) beautifully written. It should not be overlooked. (By the by, most of the spot-on moldering boarding house atmosphere of John Irving's "The Pension Grilparzer"--in *Garp*-- seems lifted straight out of Nabokov's book. Go to the source.)