Probably few people would question that Nabokov is the greatest living writer and he reached his apogee with Pale Fire and Lolita. This new novel, his first in ten years, intended to deal with the problem of time which has always been a paramount concern and preceded by much intimidating advance commentary, is pure Nabokov. All his readers will recognize the particular specifics of his apparatus. That is if they get past the opening chapters with their impedimenta which Nabokov himself recognizes ("The modest narrator has to remind the rereader of all this"). Rereading entails not only impenetrable sentences but also the entangling introduction of characters: two sisters Aqua and Marina (a portmanteau name) who marry two cousins of the same name, namely Walter D. Veen with alternate appellations (Demian or Dementius or Demon). Their progeny, that is Marina's, will be the central characters of the book: Van Veen who is presumably Aqua's child (Aqua dies with the delusion-allusion that he is not hers as indeed he isn't) and Marina's two legitimate little girls, Ada (Ardor if pronounced in Russian) and Lucette. This takes place in the kingdom of Terra (America) and more specifically on the family estate, Ardis, where the "romantic siblings" Van and Ada enjoy each other immoderately as youngsters. A little later they will be joined by the lewd Lucette, a paranymph, but in spite of endless tumbling together, it will be Ada that Van loves all of his 97 years and to whom he comes back again and again and finally permanently. To return to the theory of time with which the book essentially deals (however rakish, or raffish, the fictional substructure) Nabokov discusses it at length (and finally in a closing essay) via Veen who makes it his lifework (along with dreams and dementia): time as memory and memory in the making, time as perception, time as a "continuous becoming" and a threatening disintegration into "everlasting nonlastingness" or oblivion, time and space, space and time with the defeating recognition that "I am because I die." But as Ada says, "We can know the time, we can know a time. We can never know Time." . . . And to return to the above mentioned apparatus: it's all there—the wordmanship and the polylingual punning (Aujourd'hui— heute-toity); the entomological and botanical addenda (maidenhair and butterflies); and the particular pleasures of little girls although, as in Lolita, the erotica is a dalliance of the intellect rather than the flesh. But as compared to the earlier books, there is little passion or compassion: some of it is dazzling, much of it is enervating. And as for that general reader, Caveat caviar.
Pub Date: May 5, 1969
ISBN: 0679725229
Page Count: 626
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.
Based on an actual incident in Nazi-occupied Belgium, Ramzipoor’s debut is a tragicomic account of fake news for a cause.
Structured like a heist movie, the novel follows several members of a conspiracy in Enghien, Belgium, who have a daring plan. The conspirators do not intend to survive this caper, only to bring some humor—and encouragement for resisters—into the grim existence of Belgians under Nazi rule. To this end, the plotters—among them Marc Aubrion, a journalist and comic; David Spiegelman, an expert forger; Lada Tarcovich, a smuggler and sex worker; and Gamin, a girl masquerading as a male street urchin—intend to...publish a newspaper. And only one issue of a newspaper, to be substituted on one night for the regular evening paper, Le Soir, which has become a mouthpiece for Nazi disinformation. Le Faux Soir, as the changeling paper is appropriately dubbed, will feature satire, doctored photographs making fun of Hitler, and wry requests for a long-overdue Allied invasion. (Target press date: Nov. 11, 1943.) To avoid immediate capture, the Faux Soir staff must act as double agents, convincing (or maybe not) the local Nazi commandant, August Wolff, that they are actually putting out an anti-Allies “propaganda bomb.” The challenge of fleshing out and differentiating so many colorful characters, combined with the sheer logistics of acquiring paper, ink, money, facilities, etc. under the Gestapo’s nose, makes for an excruciatingly slow exposé of how this sausage will be made. The banter here, reminiscent of the better Ocean’s Eleven sequels, keeps the mechanism well oiled, but it is still creaky. A few scenes amply illustrate the brutality of the Occupation, and sexual orientation works its way in: Lada is a lesbian and David, in addition to being a Jew, is gay—August Wolff’s closeted desire may be the only reason David has, so far, escaped the camps. The genuine pathos at the end of this overdetermined rainbow may be worth the wait.
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0815-7
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A contemporary equivalent of This Side of Paradise or Vile Bodies, and another solid building-block in one of contemporary...
A first US appearance of a novel originally published in 1987, this crisp portrayal of “flaming youth” in the late 1960s proves one of Murakami’s most appealing—if uncharacteristic—books.
Best known to us as the comic surrealist-symbolist author of such rousing postmodernist fare as A Wild Sheep Chase (1989), Murakami is also a highly intelligent romantic who feels the pangs of his protagonist Toru Watanabe’s insistent sexual and intellectual hungers and renders them with unsparing clarity (the matter-of-fact sexual frankness here seems unusual for a Japanese novel, even a 1987 one).Toru’s narrative of his student years, lived out against a backdrop of ongoing “campus riots,” focuses on the lessons he learns from relationships with several highly individual characters, two of them women he simultaneously loves (or thinks he loves). Mercurial Naoko, who clearly perceives the seeds of her own encroaching madness (“It’s like I’m split in two and playing tag with myself”), continues to tug away at Toru’s emotions even after she enters a sanatorium. Meanwhile, coy fellow student Midori tries to dispel shadows cast by her parents’ painful deaths by fantasizing and simulating—though never actually experiencing—sex with him. Other perspectives on Toru’s hard-won assumption of maturity are offered by older student Nagasawa (“a secret reader of classic novels,” and a compulsive seducer); Naoko’s roommate Reiko, a music teacher (and self-styled interpreter of such Beatles’ songs as the one that provides Murakami’s evocative title) who’s perhaps also her lesbian lover; and the specter of Toru’s boyhood friend Kizuki, a teenaged suicide. There’s a lot of talk about books (particularly Fitzgerald’s and Hesse’s) and other cultural topics, in a blithely discursive and meditative story that’s nevertheless firmly anchored to the here and now by the vibrant immediacy of its closely observed characters and their quite credibly conflicted psyches and libidos.
A contemporary equivalent of This Side of Paradise or Vile Bodies, and another solid building-block in one of contemporary fiction’s most energetic and impressive bodies of work.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70402-7
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
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