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Mary

3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 · rating details · 1,802 ratings · 120 reviews

Mary is a gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia—Nabokov's first novel.In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair.His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolution...more

Hardcover, 114 pages

Published January 1st 1970 by McGraw-Hill Companies (first published 1925)

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Jan 21, 2013 Janice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’m reviewing this under less than ideal circumstances, as I read this over three months ago back in August -- at the Washington Dulles airport no less, waiting for a flight back home after a ten hour flight from Rome in which I barely slept. But I can’t get it out of my head. So I thought, this book is called Mary, but it’s from Ganin’s perspective -- Ganin, a kind of douchey lothario (from what I remember) that jilts his lover Mary, whom he had adored and idealized, up until he got what he wa...more I’m reviewing this under less than ideal circumstances, as I read this over three months ago back in August -- at the Washington Dulles airport no less, waiting for a flight back home after a ten hour flight from Rome in which I barely slept. But I can’t get it out of my head. So I thought, this book is called Mary, but it’s from Ganin’s perspective -- Ganin, a kind of douchey lothario (from what I remember) that jilts his lover Mary, whom he had adored and idealized, up until he got what he wanted from her, and suddenly, the mystery is gone and he's sick of her. Years later he is suddenly reminded of her and becomes obsessed with seeing her again. What would Mary’s side of the story be like? And thus...

Legal Notice: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Let’s say you are at your local food co-op, minding your own business, shopping for kombucha, organic cotton maxi pads, and tofurkey, when HE walks into the store. HE, being ‘Fred,’ your former non-sexual pseudo-boyfriend for many years; the man that singlehandedly destroyed any hope or belief you had in finding any kind of love on this prison-planet. Thankfully, he doesn’t see you. So you do what any other ~~neurotic, immature, delusional, self-important, bare-faced, sweatpants clad woman-child~~ well-adjusted, mature, self-assured, devastatingly-beautiful-thirty-one-year-old-sex-goddess would do. You abandon your basket in the middle of the bulk items aisle, and “discretely” rush out of the store.

When you were much younger and dumber, you had this friend Fred, with whom you were unnaturally close and codependent, and spent all of your free time together. Your friendship prevented you from forming any kind of romantic interest in anyone else. Needless to say, things eventually changed. It got to the point where you could never be alone together, because it always felt like something was about to burst. You later realize this pressurized feeling is known as sexual tension. Finally, one day, you are alone, in his shitty studio apartment that reeks of Drum tobacco and Nag Champa. Suddenly his mouth is on yours. And you see stars. And glitter - a mystical light; just like in the movies. You had never seen that before, or since (and this fact makes you hate yourself even more.) Yadda, yadda, yadda, you wind up spending the next three days in this studio apartment; the Murphy bed becomes a lily pad floating on a placid sea of bliss.

description

After this incident, you neither see each other nor speak for about a week. You fortuitously run into each other at a cafe. The conversation that transpires is not good. “Well, things worked out with Kelly and I.” he confesses. He had previously told you about this girl he was into. Eventually, the conversation turns to “the incident,” (hereinafter, “the misadventure”). He makes sleazy comments about your erotic encounter, and then goes as far as to say that he actually prefers your physique to Kelly’s “squishiness.” To your dismay, this gives you a smug feeling of satisfaction; a poor consolation for feeling betrayed, objectified, used and defiled. Not only that, but this was in direct contravention with the Fred you knew and loved. Fred was sensitive! Fred was a feminist! Fred was intellectual! Fred was creative and wrote corny songs about you! Fred gave a guy a black eye “defending your honor”! Fred “respected” you! Fred was a douche. Furthermore, Fred knew you fairly well, and would thus know how disgusting and offensive you would find such commentary (and ~~that you suffer from narcissistic personality disorder~~ how gargantuan and voracious your ego is). Your reaction is not good. You ~~stare at him like a deer in headlights, run out of the cafe, and sit in your car and cry~~ invoke the spirit of Lee Marvin’s character in The Big Heat and throw a scalding hot pot of coffee in his face, leaving him permanently disfigured. Your sole consolation, (and this is really fucked up) is that he winds up ~~having a nervous breakdown shortly after the conversation re: the misadventure, which culminates in his checking in to a psychiatric facility (the very one your father works in)~~ having his penis severed and thrown into a field by Lorena Bobbitt. Thereinafter, you try to hate him, but you can’t, but you can also never forgive him, despite ~~the breakdown~~ his unfortunate injury. (less)

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Jan 27, 2011 Marcus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, russian

It's not like the Nabokov I know to write a Russian book, but despite its Berlin setting, this is a very Russian book. There's a Dostoyevsky-like dinner scene, mentions of revolutions and Cossacks, stealing money from drawers and of course plenty of drunkenness. It's strange to get so much of it from an author that despite his origins, feels so American. Still, amidst all the uncharacteristic Russianness, there is a definite hint of what was to come in later Nabokov novels.

There's some of the c...more

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Dec 18, 2009 Chad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

With his very first novel, Nabokov seems to tease the reader with the notion that they're reading a Victorian romance. His language is beautifuly flowery and many flashbacks explore picturesque landscapes and the heartache of first love. But the present-day segments of the novel feature a misantrophic lead, a vapid and clueless love triangle, a sad-sack elder statesmen to whom noone listens, and a pair of obviously gay ballet dancers. Nabokov is very clear: he is no Victorian, but is indeed a po...more

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Mar 16, 2013 John Beck rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, fiction

http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/11/book-review-mary-by-vladimir-nabokov....

Vladimir Nabokov's Mary is the story of a man with the opportunity to be reunited with an old flame. Nostalgia is a difficult emotion to build a book around. Our fond remembrance of our past, or at least my remembrance of mine, is built around a thousand little moments gone forever.

I am not nostalgic for a holiday. I have no fond memories of this or that Thanksgiving, a wonderful New Year's Eve or a splendid Fourt...more http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/11/book-review-mary-by-vladimir-nabokov....

Vladimir Nabokov's Mary is the story of a man with the opportunity to be reunited with an old flame. Nostalgia is a difficult emotion to build a book around. Our fond remembrance of our past, or at least my remembrance of mine, is built around a thousand little moments gone forever.

I am not nostalgic for a holiday. I have no fond memories of this or that Thanksgiving, a wonderful New Year's Eve or a splendid Fourth of July. I have memories of those events, some are even good. But the holidays and big events are simply built up too far. I dislike most of them before they are over; and I can't think of one I'd wish back.

But the every day moments.... My grandparents used to come over every Monday night for pasta. During Lent, we would get fried fish I would douse in ketchup. I spent a summer teaching myself to play Dungeons & Dragons because we had an adventure in a box in the house, and it seemed like a shame not to use it. I spent hours building space ships with my Legos for the express purpose of having the ship crash and explode spectacularly, so that it could be rebuilt. In the fall, while I was in high school, I would buy a bag of apples from one of the farms and leave it in my car as an after school snack.

Do any of those things mean anything to you? Unless you lived a portion of it with me, of course not.

All of which is to say, Nabokov took quite a leap in writing his first book about a character living in the grips of nostalgia. Lev Ganin is a boarder in a rooming house, and the horrible little man across the hall has spent most of the past year ranting about house his wife "will be here soon." Suddenly, soon is Saturday, and when Ganin sees a picture of the wife, he realizes it's his old girlfriend Mary, "his first affair." Cue the violins.

Who is more deserving of happiness than I? Ganin starts to plot his new life with Mary. Of course he'll steal her away from her husband, and then they can have the life together they could have had if life had been different.

Nabokov keeps the plot simple, and he made Ganin just likable enough to keep me reading. In some ways, I like Ganin's antihero-ness, while there are plenty of moments I want to slap him in the head and tell him to stop acting like he's 16 years old.

Mary lacks a lot of the playfulness I liked so much in Lolita and Pale Fire. I'm chocking that up to #firstbookproblems.

I won't spoil the ending, except to say that most of the book occurs before Saturday, and my wish, my little nostalgia for Mary, is that I would have liked to have known more of Ganin when he was not caught up daydreaming about his past.(less)

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Jan 29, 2013 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For a book in which largely nothing happens, Nabokov has a lot to say. In fact, the novella has so little in terms of notable actionable events, that it could be adumbrated in less than a couple of sentences. But to do so would be missing the point. It is a Bildungsroman of the protagonist Ganin; although this does not become apparent until the very end of the story. With a misleading trajectory of introspection which for most of seems like he is moving backwards, living vicariously through his...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Dale R. Wilsey Jr. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, literature, favorites, 4-star

Memories and shadows. Images of the past that roll through the mind like smoke escaping the bellies of locomotives. A photo. A certain scent. Mary. Mary is coming.

Nabokov's first novel has cemented his place on my list of favorite writers. His writing is consistently and incredibly beautiful. In his preface to this printing, he discusses the process of translating "Mary" to English and the problems with the story he refused to fix in the process, retaining every bit of the original writing as po...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Dan Keating rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just read Vladimir Nabokov's "Mary" in a single day. Two things can be extracted from that fact - one, that "Mary" is a book that can be read in a single day, and two, that Mary is enjoyable and engaging enough to warrant reading in a single day.

On the first point - yes, "Mary" isn't as difficult a read as Nabokov's later work. While his later florid and gorgeous prose is still present here, it doesn't suffuse the whole being of the novel (as it does in "Lolita"); instead it serves to highligh...more I just read Vladimir Nabokov's "Mary" in a single day. Two things can be extracted from that fact - one, that "Mary" is a book that can be read in a single day, and two, that Mary is enjoyable and engaging enough to warrant reading in a single day.

On the first point - yes, "Mary" isn't as difficult a read as Nabokov's later work. While his later florid and gorgeous prose is still present here, it doesn't suffuse the whole being of the novel (as it does in "Lolita"); instead it serves to highlight those portions of the book that the characters think of most romantically and/or emphatically, whereas much of the rest of the novel is written in more straightforward prose so as to highlight the mundane nature of the characters' lives. Boredom and longing are the two worst enemies of the Russian emigre here, highlighted by Nabokov's use of language. While clever, this use of style is eclipsed both by contemporaneous writing (Hemingway published "The Sun Also Rises" only a year later, whereas Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" was then only five years off) and by Nabokov's later writing.

On the second point - "Mary" is an excruciatingly relatable and engaging read. Between the aforementioned simpler prose and the use of wide sweeping themes - the intrusion of idyllic childhood romance on disaffected adulthood - "Mary" is perhaps Nabokov's most universal novel. I found myself at many points throughout identifying with Ganin's reminisces. Moreover, the novel is very moving - once again, as mentioned Nabokov's evocative use of words does shine through, nowhere more noticeably than in the many passages in which Ganin loses himself in his memories of the romance he shared with Mary when they were younger.

"Mary" is an excellent read. It is far from Nabokov's best, and though I've stated that it is more accessible than many of his greater later novels, I still wouldn't consider it an ample introduction to Nabokov's work. As an enjoyable read and a no-doubt heartfelt glimpse into the minds and souls of displaced Russians in the 1920s (all of whom are at once archetypes and well-rounded characters at the same time, one of Nabokov's greater gifts in storytelling), it is standout, but for the scholar of Russian literature (or Nabokov in particular) it merits more as a historical footnote than a truly necessary piece of literature. In short, this book is recommended, but if you've already read the more noteworthy Nabokov novels, don't expect to be blown away. (less)

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Jul 23, 2011 MJ Nicholls rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: borscht-and-kvass, novellas

Vladimir’s debut, pictured here in resplendent pink, is the slight tale of arch git Ganin remembering his first love—the obeisant Mary with the Tartar nose. The novel suffers from lingering descriptions of almost every strange nuance to each individual scene, written before Nabokovian prose was truly Nabokovian. This problem dogs some of his earlier work, among them Invitation to a Beheading and The Luzhin Defense in its snoozier moments.

This general qualm aside (well, it’s quite a large qualm,...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Lidya Pawestri Ayuningtyas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Cerita berjalan lambat karena terlalu banyak deskripsi, tapi entah kenapa saya suka sekali dengan pendeskripsian latar pada novel ini. Untuk kisahnya sendiri tidak terlalu istimewa, mengenai memori tentang cinta pertama, tapi endingnya sendiri masuk akal. Dua bintang untuk pendeskripsian cerita, satu bintang untuk ending, satu bintang lagi karena buku ini sendu dan manis.
Ganin, si protagonis, pada suatu hari Minggu terjebak di dalam lift bersama dengan seorang teman pondokannya di Berlin. Pria y...more

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Dec 21, 2011 Stephen M rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There's nothing particularly wrong with Nobokov's debut, but it left me underwhelmed. Sure, there are some beautiful descriptions and a handful of enjoyable characters, but the whole time I wondered, what's the point?. Because essentially, this is a story about lost love and moving on; which it's possible that at the time this was written, it was not as much of an over-used cliché as it is now. I expected a lot more out of the genius that gave us Lolita.

Reading first books have always been fun...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Lotte rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Mary" is de debuutroman van Nabokov. Het boekje (slechts 136 blz.) verhaalt over Ganin, een Russische emigré die in een pension in Berlijn herinneringen ophaalt aan Mary, zijn eerste geliefde. Het verhaal ontrolt zich traag (pas in de helft ongeveer begint hij te vertellen over Mary) en alles wordt tot in de details beschreven. De exentrieke gasten in het pension zijn allemaal landgenoten van Ganin en mijmeren samen over hun verloren Rusland. Het is zeer filmisch geschreven, met prachtige metaf...more

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Nov 20, 2011 Hamish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lit

I remember hearing somewhere (or maybe my mind invented it) that Nabokov's first novel was a weak first step towards future greatness. Maybe going in with lowered expectations helped, but I ended up enjoying Mary a lot. You can tell it's his first book, in that stylistically the prose is similar to his other work, but it lacks that naturalness he normally has. Nabokov has always seemed to me like an author that never misses in his prose; his wording is always clever, clear and unforced. Here it'...more

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May 15, 2013 John Pappas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I suppose Nabokov scholars might herald the recent publication of the posthumous drafts and notes of the novel-to-be entitled The Original of Laura because of the insight it gives into Nabokov's writing process, but, to me, reading his first novel, Mary, is much more illuminating. Here, one can find some of Nabokov's ur-motifs, in nascent form, but there none-the-less: memory and longing, identity (and mistaken identity), the influence of the past on the present, compulsion and even a sort of tw...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Eqwik rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Грустный роман... Потерянные герои, потерянная страна, потерянная любовь. Серая и однообразная жизнь российских эмигрантов. Каждый из них по разному относится к своей родине. Но все они не могут её забыть, Россия предстает в разговорах снова и снова. Герои непрерывно вспоминают своё прошлое. Хотя никто из них так и не может построить своё настоящее. Повествование сплетается вокруг жизни о воспоминаний одного из эмигрантов.
Нескончаемая череда событий заставила главного героя отдалиться, забыть о...more Грустный роман... Потерянные герои, потерянная страна, потерянная любовь. Серая и однообразная жизнь российских эмигрантов. Каждый из них по разному относится к своей родине. Но все они не могут её забыть, Россия предстает в разговорах снова и снова. Герои непрерывно вспоминают своё прошлое. Хотя никто из них так и не может построить своё настоящее. Повествование сплетается вокруг жизни о воспоминаний одного из эмигрантов.
Нескончаемая череда событий заставила главного героя отдалиться, забыть о своей первой истинной любви. Любви, о которой он с трепетом вспоминает годы спустя.
Но неожиданно ему выпадает шанс вновь встретиться с ней. Она приезжает в тот же пансион, где он остановился. Он не видел её уже много лет, но чудесные воспоминания и пой сей день будоражат его душу. И он предается этим сладким мыслям прошлого. День за днем он проводит в приятных грезах. Переживает ты прошлую, юношескую любовь. Влюбляется заново, оживляет все самые радостные мысли. И решается увезти Машеньку с собой. Его не волнует ни ее муж, ни его текущее положение. Он не думает, как сама Машенька отнесется к этой затеи. Он твердо уверен, что она по прежнему его любит и последует за ним.
И вот он уже едет на вокзал за ней, но вдруг неожиданно внутри него что-то ломается. Он понимает, что все эти дни он жил только прошлым. Безусловно прекрасным, но прошлым. А прошлое, к сожалению, уже нельзя возвратить. Эта мысль так стремительно проносится в его голове и в одно мгновение он понимает, что никакой любви с Машенькой не бывать. Он предпочел сохранить в себе только приятные воспоминания. Ту светлую и манящую любовь, которая у него когда то была.
Ничего уже не вернуть, он понимает это как никогда. И с легким сердцем отправляется на поиски новой жизни.(less)

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Apr 04, 2011 Liz rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

slight. pretty. kinda misogynist and solipsist. I fucking hated Ganin. ok, cool, we get it, the thrill is gone once you've actually fucked her, cry me a river. a repulsive protagonist can be great (e.g. Lolita, duh), but the narrative doesn't really address Ganin's extreme callousness and it seriously undermines the power of the whole book. the main point of interest here is probably the insight into nabokov's later work -- you begin to see a pattern of repeating themes and motifs. nostalgia, ad...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Matt rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of Nabokov's work, people studying author's first works

Shelves: from-the-library

Ugh, I really wish I hadn't started this book. I'm nearly halfway through it, and I haven't been able to keep focus through nearly all of it. It is well and smartly written from a technical standpoint, but not from a reader's. Nothing even remotely interesting happens, and, unlike Joyce's Ulysses, the thoughts put forward are neither insightful to the human mind nor even presented in an interesting manner.

Some of the issues I have with this book could be due to the translator, but since Nabokov...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Michiyo 'jia' Fujiwara rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel-dewasa, european-literature, classics-series, roman

Waah..akhir cerita yang tidak diduga!!! Ternyata sosok Maria itu..........tidak akan diceritakan disini. Adalah dosa mengganggu kesenangan seseorang membaca..aku secara pribadi akan membiarkan kalian menikmati sendiri lembar tiap lembar jalan cerita dalam novel ini..Sebagai novel perdana, Nabokov telah secara jelas menancapkan ciri khas-nya; dekripsinya jelas sekali mengenai suatu hal, misal; menjelaskan ruang..jadi kesannya membosankan karena lambat sekali alurnya..dan satu lagi..selalu menyeli...more

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Jan 28, 2010 Iris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed reading this. It was beautifully paced. It does read like a first novel, or maybe an extended short story, and the author feels eager to showcase his obvious talent and many interests (lepidoptery and insects come in).

Mary is deceptively simplistic, and filled with deliberate detail. The colors mauve and yellow seem to appear only at very specific times, perfume and scent is a vital part of character, and the word "Tartar" served to link Mary with the Russian landscape, and anch...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Benjamin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mary, the first book of Nabokov's published, is certainly not his strongest work, nor is it particularly helped by the fact that this is the only one of his Russian-language novels translated by someone other than himself. The book feels somehow not entirely connected, in a way I am not sure was intentional on the part of the author. A professor of mine described the work adequately in saying that it is not his most subtle work, that all his tricks of the narrative are so easily distinguishable....more

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Jul 30, 2012 Frank rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This little book is a different side of Nabokov from what I've seen before, limited that may be. The only other things I've read, Lolita and Pnin ,were both set in the States, and more specifically, that nebulous land of "Academia". This little book, written much earlier, is set amongst Russian emirgrés in Berlin, and just a few years after the October Revolution. It was a little view at a long-past world and how its inhabitants viewed their recently-past world and how they might shake off the...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Jonathan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Vladimir Nabokov hadn't reached the same literary maturity as when he wrote Lolita or Ada or Ador but, for a first novel, Mary still represents a gloriously composed tale that captivates you at every turn. His prose may be less opulent, his synesthesia not fully embraced, yet in its compositional frugality Mary presents much of the young author's voice - authoritative, brilliant, and rapturous.

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Nov 20, 2011 Tata rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Mashenka”, 1926, (“Mary”) is Nabokov’s first work, and I’m glad this was the first Nabokov’s book I’ve read.

Lev Ganin is a russian immigrant, displaced by the Russian Revolution, who lives in a boarding house in Berlin. His life is centered around a small house - among other russian immigrants with their crooked lives and dead hopes. One day Ganin discovers that his long-lost first love - Mary - comes to Berlin and happens to be a wife of one of the boarders. Ganin wants to meet Mary, to win he...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Sarah Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Live the pure simplicity and shortness of the book. Very authentic.

When I lived at the shores of Lake Geneva and attended Art Center (Europe) I was given Nabokov as a subject to read and write about in literature class. I did not want to read anything, because I was ignorant and the Lolita stereotype filled my mind. Little did I know that Nabokov is one of the finest bilingual writers I have found. I even ended up befriending his (late) son Dmitri, who lived a few houses up from mine in Montreux...more

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May 04, 2009 Mojgan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

بسیار زیبا- رها کردن ماری بسیار درک شدنی و ملموس است. فکر نمی کنم بهتر از این پایان چیز دیگری امکان داشت

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Mar 29, 2011 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: post-modern, passion, gin-n-smoke

"Other than the image no Mary existed, nor could exist"
Nabakov in just 130odd pages has put into words an idea some friends and I have been grappiling with for some time: when you're in love, you create a concept of the person, which could for all you know be far from the reality. This story plays on that completely, as Ganin, the protagonist who is likeable but flawed as a person, revels in the memories of his love. The fact he hasn't seen his Mary in a long time means nothing to him.

On top of...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Tanuj Solanki rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, rus

In Guernica, the best internet magazine on the planet, I read, in late 2010, a never-before-published interview of John Updike, in which he talked of Vladimir Nabokov – the synesthete, lepidopterist, chess-loving professeur, whose contribution to world literature is constantly talked of as tantamount to that of half a dozen or so giants – with a cumbersome and entrenched feeling of despair, for I was at that time months away from reading a novel-length work of the Russian. But the prelude to tha...more In Guernica, the best internet magazine on the planet, I read, in late 2010, a never-before-published interview of John Updike, in which he talked of Vladimir Nabokov – the synesthete, lepidopterist, chess-loving professeur, whose contribution to world literature is constantly talked of as tantamount to that of half a dozen or so giants – with a cumbersome and entrenched feeling of despair, for I was at that time months away from reading a novel-length work of the Russian. But the prelude to that interview morphed my tingling of a curious reader into the avowal of a determined one, and I took a pledge, of poring through all of Vladimir Nabokov’s works in chronological order. What the prelude had mentioned was Updike’s 1964 summary of the creator of ‘Lolita’ – “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written: ecstatically”. And the question that had arisen in my mind was simple – “What is ‘ecstatic’ prose?”

Mashenka, or Mary, as it was translated in in English with the help of the author, is a short novel written in prose that can be ascribed numerous hortatory adjectives – exuberant, evocative, fine – and also the one that Updike employed. It was Vladimir’s first, written as an émigré writer based in 1920s Berlin, with a protagonist that shared the same situation, and explored a subject that is personal enough to be absolutely real, over and above the powers and limits of the novel itself – the joyous, transcendental memories of first love acting as boredom’s emollient.

In reading Mary, the reviewer has – with a slight pinch of reality and a well-timed return to earthly evaluation as against romaticization of a writer – realized that although ecstatic prose may well remain the distinctive feature of Nabokov’s writing in all his works, it does not , and cannot, suffice in being the overarching content of a novel. ‘Mary’ offers nothing of particular interest to the reader except the marvellous descriptions, and the tentative first steps of a first-time novelist in almost all other aspects of narration, in which he neither categorically succeeds nor appears irredeemably inept.

‘Mary’ is a private work, and seems germinated in the author’s mind from an urge to get over the truth of a lost relationship. It is intended also to display talent and is therefore shrewdly short on ambition. All in all, the purported objectives are achieved, and although the modern reader may not find too much ‘substance’ in the novel, its place in Nabokov’s canon, as his first attempt at the art of the novel in his first language, is apt.(less)

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Dec 07, 2011 Kris McCracken rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Vladimir Nabokov’s debut novel Mary is set in 1920s Berlin, amongst the exiled Russian community in the immediate wake of the Russian Revolution.

Yet this is no political novel, rather a very personal account of one’s first love. A brilliant series of portraits of drifters thrown into circumstances beyond any of their control allows Nabokov the scope to explore some big themes of love, desire, memory, happiness, nostalgia, freedom and belonging in interesting and innovative ways.

Again, I very mu...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Jason Lundberg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 0wnz0red, translated

Quite beautifully written, with Nabokov's hyper-aware sense of minute detail, all leading up to a meeting that, in the end, never takes place, and is dismissed all too quickly. I wasn't expecting Ganin to sweep Mary into his arms in a Hollywood-type ending, but still, the ending is so anticlimactic as to be unsatisfying. It doesn't negate the beautiful remembrances earlier in the book, but it does sting.

On of my favorite passages, from pages 59-60:

"No one at home knew about it, and life went on...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nabokov's first novel, and, as he says in the introduction, a purging of himself and his own experiences so that he could get on with writing other things. I identified with Ganin's feeling of depression as a result of having no desire. The scenes in the boarding house are wonderful as are the passages inside Ganin's head. Overall it's a tight book and a quick read.

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“He spent about an hour drinking coffee, staring at a picture window and watching the passers-by. Back in his room he tried to r...more

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Jul 19, 2007 Olivia rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: readers of Nabokov who want to see his earlier style

Though Mary does in some ways foreshadow Lolita, it's missing most of the aspects that make the latter such a successful read: namely, suspense and a dynamic love situation. We have a third-person narration, but the main character, Ganin, reaks of Humbert, minus the humour. Ganin cannot defend himself the way Humbert does because he's not directing the story, and I found myself frustrated and tired of his memories, thoughts, and actions by the middle of the story.

Hearing about Ganin's shallow...more

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About Vladimir Nabokov

Russian: Владимир Владимирович Набоков

Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery and had an interest in chess problems.

Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intrica...more

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Quotes from Mary

“Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.” — 29 people liked it

“...memory can restore to life everything except smells, although nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.” — 17 people liked it

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