Donna's review
Invitation to a Beheading
by Vladimir Nabokov
Donna's review
Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
Donna's review
rating:
bookshelves:
read---fiction
I read this book as a "spin-off" from the book "Reading Lolita in Tehran" -- a book I probably would give ten stars if I could. However, I found "Invitation to a Beheading" extraordinarily difficult to read. It is very surrealistic and , I thought, could make its main point--about how bad conformity can be and beware of state-involvement in your life, etc.--more effectively in far fewer pages. There are definitely some very darkly humorous anecdotes in the tale, but for me it was difficult to maintain interest in the long, dream-like novel which was basically about a totally irrational world. This book, for me was an instance, of wrong verhicle for the creative message. Smaller could have been much better.
