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the_tower's review against another edition
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
It is so intressting to tell a story through a memoir of two fictinal people. It is clear that the story is told from a perspective, that the past is looked at through rose tinted glasses. And so it's not surpraising that through other eyes our heroes love might become infatuatuion. And one sees that Van breaks the hearts of all the women he is in a relationship because he only has one love. And one sees how he drives Lucette to suicide because he cannot love her and refuses to love her carnally.
Nabokov's books are distinctly modern, always told from a unreliable perspective. In Lolita it is the perspective of pedofile who tells us about the love that he perceives. In Ada he have the perspective of a serial heart breaker who does not see the hurt he gives to others in his seek for carnal love.
Nabokov's books are distinctly modern, always told from a unreliable perspective. In Lolita it is the perspective of pedofile who tells us about the love that he perceives. In Ada he have the perspective of a serial heart breaker who does not see the hurt he gives to others in his seek for carnal love.
theodoreeeeeeads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Armpit fetishes, incestuous threesomes, long-standing ornithological metaphors for vaginas, members-only clubs hosting orgies with harems… any more for any more.
Once again launching into a Nabokov and the brilliance has already begun.
- theres a lot of couplets which makes sense as it’s about a couple and the title is a couplet.
- long-winded passages with lots of clauses for in-depth description.
Loving the comparison of Aquas’ mental illness to tap water, then likening it to Italian speech, then to bidets when it’s bad news from the doctors she doesn’t like.
It’s a challenging read this one. He gives the narrative in discrete stories that have lots of imagery, anagrams, parallels with other parts of the book, comedy and reference to obscure French and Russian literature.
Have to say that is has dropped off. It’s going into detail about sweet nothing. The plot is not really progressing but it’s complex and difficult reading.
Transformed into a bit of a comedy now.
Easily the hardest book I’ve ever read and extremely pretentious.
His half sister just confessed that she used to have sex with her sister as teenage girls and that she gave her tips.
The threesome scene is beautifully well-written. It’s complex… metaphorical and meticulous (couplet).
Recent noteworthy passages
- “Herdsmen, spared by thunderbolts on remote hillsides, used their huge 'moaning horns' as ear trumpets to catch the lits of Ladore. Virgin châtelaines in marble-floored manors fondled their lone flames fanned by Van's romance.”
- “Sounds have colors, colors have smells. The fire of Lucette's amber runs through the night of Ada's odor and ardor, and stops at the threshold of Van's lavender goat.”
The prose is beautiful in places. I think there’s quite a lot of variation in the style. You have to have your thinking cap on at all times to pick up on all the clever symbolism and allegory.
Ok so he’s duplicitously clever. The chapter on time and space is truly sublime. Nabokov shines.
It ends beautifully and poetically as you might expect.
cillantro's review against another edition
5.0
Deliciously hedonistic. Whenever the topic of time (Time) is brought up, it makes one think about the whole of the plot, both intradiegetically and extradiegetically. It really gives dimension to the love affair (or should I say affairs?).
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
masterofdoom's review against another edition
5.0
The words are like perfect little crystals that form perfect paragraphs that coagulate into crystal chapters like perfect short stories that crystallize into Ada or Ardor. You need to tune your mind to this book, to its vibration frequency, but after a perfect connection is made your mind will be changed forever.
vitalbeachyeah's review against another edition
3.0
Perhaps my taste in books has subtly shifted since I last read a Nabokov; perhaps this is an unusually poor novel by his standards; whichever, I found Ada hard work.
Central to my enjoyment of his other novels is the dizzying sugar-rush of his prose style. And key to that style is a certain amount of self-indulgence. But here the self-indulgent language games almost sink the book - there's a never-ending procession of smug puns, alliteration, parodies of other novels, passages in French and Russian, and so on. All of which is very *clever* (and I did enjoy some passages) but it never achieves the transcendental beauty or elegance of his better writing. It's artful, not art.
Also,and I think this needs to be said: previously I've given Nabokov a pass over this, but here's *another* novel about having sex with a 12-year old girl, and at this point I'm beginning to find the theme both boring and creepy. And here, unlike in Lolita, he often seems to be inviting us to love and admire his paedophilic protagonist.
Central to my enjoyment of his other novels is the dizzying sugar-rush of his prose style. And key to that style is a certain amount of self-indulgence. But here the self-indulgent language games almost sink the book - there's a never-ending procession of smug puns, alliteration, parodies of other novels, passages in French and Russian, and so on. All of which is very *clever* (and I did enjoy some passages) but it never achieves the transcendental beauty or elegance of his better writing. It's artful, not art.
Also,and I think this needs to be said: previously I've given Nabokov a pass over this, but here's *another* novel about having sex with a 12-year old girl, and at this point I'm beginning to find the theme both boring and creepy. And here, unlike in Lolita, he often seems to be inviting us to love and admire his paedophilic protagonist.
win_monroe's review against another edition
5.0
I just finished "Ada, or Ardor," (I have been reading a lot of nonfiction simultaneously). I need some time to mull it over a bit and I plan on reading a few critical articles on it in the coming week, but as of now I would give it a solid 9/10, potentially a 9.5 as I look back on it and turn it over more.
First and foremost it is simply beautiful. It's language, imagery and word play are endless in scope as well as depth. It is written passionately and tenderly throughout in a way that apotheosizes love and the power of imagination (to borrow some words from a review). It is strange in its aspects as a kind of half way sci-fiction in a world much like ours but not quite the same, perhaps a kind of alternative history. Van and Ada live in a world where Russia and America appear to have been joined for some time and where, after some great catastrophe we never learn about, electricity has been banned (they use dorophones instead of telephones, for example). There are religious differences that don't amount to much other than indicating that they are not our own ("By log, what have you done?"). They also discuss the possibility of another metaphysical world, called Terra (they live on Anti-Terra), which is subject to some of the same speculation as the afterlife, and yet it is often treated as a psychological question and thus obviously an extended metaphor for art as well as potentially being our world. Through all of this is a truly powerful story of love, "troubled by incest" and a quest to understand the nature of time. Ultimately it is a powerful and beautiful piece work from one of history's finest writers.
First and foremost it is simply beautiful. It's language, imagery and word play are endless in scope as well as depth. It is written passionately and tenderly throughout in a way that apotheosizes love and the power of imagination (to borrow some words from a review). It is strange in its aspects as a kind of half way sci-fiction in a world much like ours but not quite the same, perhaps a kind of alternative history. Van and Ada live in a world where Russia and America appear to have been joined for some time and where, after some great catastrophe we never learn about, electricity has been banned (they use dorophones instead of telephones, for example). There are religious differences that don't amount to much other than indicating that they are not our own ("By log, what have you done?"). They also discuss the possibility of another metaphysical world, called Terra (they live on Anti-Terra), which is subject to some of the same speculation as the afterlife, and yet it is often treated as a psychological question and thus obviously an extended metaphor for art as well as potentially being our world. Through all of this is a truly powerful story of love, "troubled by incest" and a quest to understand the nature of time. Ultimately it is a powerful and beautiful piece work from one of history's finest writers.
swannscribe's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse and Incest
korrick's review against another edition
4.0
Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive.If Nabokov is anything, he's clever. Unfortunately for Nabokov, clever is as clever does is rarely good enough in my case, so that lack of fifth star is a team effort on both our parts. Fortunately for Nabakov, so are the remaining four stars, making this review a pleased one despite all my grumbling.
As stated in the summary, the book encompasses fairy tale, epic, thoughts on time, parody of novel, and erotica. The first and second were of medium intrigue and the fifth rapidly grew old due to the reader's personal preferences, leaving said reader to relish the pieces and parcels of the third and fourth that were registered to a pleasing extent.
In full, deliberate consciousness, at the moment of the hooded click, he bunched the recent past with the imminent future and thought to himself that this would remain an objective perception of the real present and that he must remember the flavor, the flash, the flesh of the present (as he, indeed, remembered it a half dozen years later - and now, in the second half of the next century).But here we run into more misfortune, for if you're going to parody names such as Mann and Proust, you have to measure up to the point of the reader preferring the imitation to the original. For this reader, it was close, but no cigar. As for the meditations on time, they dabbled and dipped and came up with some rather intricate insight, but for one whose reading history includes Borges, the meanderings ultimately paled in comparison.
Alright, enough with the lackluster comparisons. For amidst this multifarious reception of puzzle pieces we have the ever present Nabokov, crowd-pleaser in the turn of phrase sense extraordinare. Other reviews have gone on about the linguistic tricks, so I will leave that to far more capable and interested hands than mine. For while I do like my well-crafted sentences, indeed to the point of having maintained a collection for several years, I am not enamored with deconstructing the whys and wherefores (redundant but rhythmic which concerns us now does it not?). I caught the alliteration, but the rest of the classifications went over my head. Those who are keener on that sort of thing than I, however, are in for a treat.
In the end, I wasn't bowled over enough to ignore the predecessors of yore. But I can assure you, the sum is far more than the incest of its parts.
"If I could write," mused Demon, "I would describe, in too many words no doubt, how passionately, how incandescently, how incestuously—c'est le mot—art and science meet in an insect, in a thrush, in a thistle of that ducal bosquet."
lanade's review against another edition
5.0
I think this is one of the best books I've ever read. Nabokov is a true user of language (multiple languages, that is), he plays with language the way it deserves. I found some of the vocabulary intimidating but with a dictionary handy I made my way through the book happily. The story, at times, muddled and complicated, was captivating although I didn't connect with any of the characters. The coolest part about it, was that it didn't matter! I ate the story up as a third party fly on the wall, and didn't need more than that to appreciate it. I'm glad I powered through the confusing first few chapters, this book is a masterpiece. Truly.