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rachitsingh 's review for:
Pnin
by Vladimir Nabokov
After reading Lolita, I was curious to read other books by Nabokov and had high expectations from this, but despite the interesting start of the story, my interest died out quite early!
The plot seemed very disconnected and a bunch of unrelated events connected together to show the apathy of our protagonist, the doddery and clumsy academic, Pnin. In between there was some humour but the long sentences in the description of some story or event which extended to a sub-chapter at times, made it boring. At least 4 times, I decided to stop reading simply due to the fact that it became boring and trudging towards a dull ending.
There are too many references and too many trivial characters/names. Maybe some readers found that interesting or funny but if the others do not relate to those things then, the excessive use of it makes it dull, and that is what happened here, I feel. However, some pros are that, the main character descriptions have a lot of psychological depth in it and is maintained throughout. The style of writing, when describing a place or the mental thoughts of Pnin and his situation, is quite interesting.
Two nice quotes from the book-
“Why not leave their private sorrows to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?” - T. Pnin
“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.” - Narrator
The plot seemed very disconnected and a bunch of unrelated events connected together to show the apathy of our protagonist, the doddery and clumsy academic, Pnin. In between there was some humour but the long sentences in the description of some story or event which extended to a sub-chapter at times, made it boring. At least 4 times, I decided to stop reading simply due to the fact that it became boring and trudging towards a dull ending.
There are too many references and too many trivial characters/names. Maybe some readers found that interesting or funny but if the others do not relate to those things then, the excessive use of it makes it dull, and that is what happened here, I feel. However, some pros are that, the main character descriptions have a lot of psychological depth in it and is maintained throughout. The style of writing, when describing a place or the mental thoughts of Pnin and his situation, is quite interesting.
Two nice quotes from the book-
“Why not leave their private sorrows to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?” - T. Pnin
“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.” - Narrator