A review by stewreads
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov

5.0

Nabokov wrote beautifully always. Pick any story in this book, even an uninteresting story, and you will see that this is true. He seems to have just been able to conjure up characters, plots, metaphors, whole worlds out of thin air on a whim, and spew them onto the page. The range of genres in this collection is astounding: Nabokov wrote sympathetic tales of his home in Russia, stories of his various passions in life, heartbreaking romances, neurotic letters to fictional authors, horrifying surrealist experiences, fantasies both hilarious and unbelievable, chilling ghost stories, and even, in the very last story, science fiction. Needless to say, he did it all, and he did it better than anyone else. I have not yet found (and hardly plan to find) another author who wrote in such jaw-dropping prose, or was such a fountain of creativity.

And the notes Nabokov wrote in the Appendix to each of the stories were great. Don't miss them.

P.S. I'm so glad that this was set in chronological order, as any complete short story collection should be. It was interesting to watch the author improve, considering that it's hard to imagine him ever writing anything that was less than perfect.