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Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Vladimir Nabokov

4.14 · Rating details · 9,728 ratings · 769 reviews

Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is ...more

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Paperback, 606 pages

Published February 19th 1990 by Vintage (first published 1969)

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Aug 07, 2013 Ilse rated it really liked it

Shelves: russia, reviewed

She was soon ready, and they kissed tenderly in their hall way, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few minutes. “Tower”, she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness. “And you?”
“A regular ziggurat”

A book that opens with a pedigree of aristocratic sounding Russian names could easily give the impression that a classic family epic will be the reader’s part. That misleading family tree is o She was soon ready, and they kissed tenderly in their hall way, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few minutes. “Tower”, she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness. “And you?”
“A regular ziggurat”

A book that opens with a pedigree of aristocratic sounding Russian names could easily give the impression that a classic family epic will be the reader’s part. That misleading family tree is only the beginning of the games Nabokov will play with the reader. Nabokov lures the reader into to a captivating, magical dream world, abysmal and treacherous, as well as full of illusions and spiced with jokey nods and parodic takes on honorable world literature. Ada is set on Antiterra, a distorted world where Americans speak Russian and Time does not synchronize with Earth time. Van and Ada Veen – who are, according to the family tree, cousins - are bright and pretty teenagers when they throw themselves into a passionate idyll during a long languorous summer spent on the paradisiacal family estate Ardis. Soon they discover the truth that has been scrupulously buried to them: in reality they are brother and sister. Their unusual bond chances on numerous obstacles and leads to the tragic demise of their "uterine" half-sister Lucette, who is also in love with Van. Through the memoirs of the now aged Van, interlaced with Ada's comments, the baffled reader learns how their incestuous love weathers out long years of separation, infidelity, frequent brothel visits and Ada's marriage to another. Sinking into the surreal world of Ada - Nabokov’s longest - takes time, but the persistent reader is rewarded with a multi-layered, exuberant and high-flown novel. Anyone wishing further digging into and exploring all the literary and cultural references of the novel can spend many delicious hours on Adaonline, where Brian Boyd, Nabokov’s biographer, offers an elaborately annotated version of Ada.

‘Toren’, lispelde ze als antwoord op zijn vragende blik, precies zoals wanneer ze op die honingochtenden in het verleden elkaars geluk de maat namen. ‘En jij?’ ‘Een ware ziggurat’.

Een boek dat opent met een stamboom vol aristocratische Russische namen wekt de indruk dat een klassiek familie-epos je deel zal zijn. Die misleidende stamboom is tekenend voor de spelletjes die Nabokov met de lezer zal spelen: hij voert je mee naar een bevreemdende, magische droomwereld, vol illusies en gekruid met knipoogjes naar en parodieën op monumenten uit de wereldliteratuur. Ada speelt zich af op Antiterra, een vervormde wereld waar Amerikanen Russisch spreken en de Tijd niet synchroon met de aardse tijd verloopt. Van en Ada Veen – volgens de stamboom neef en nicht – zijn prille tieners als ze zich tijdens een langoureuze zomer op het paradijselijke familielandgoed Ardis in een passionele idylle storten. Al snel ontdekken ze de angstvallig verzwegen waarheid: in werkelijkheid zijn ze broer en zus. Hun ongewone band stuit op talrijke hinderpalen en leidt tot de tragische ondergang van hun ‘uteriene’ halfzus Lucette, die ook verliefd is op Van. In de memoires van de nu stokoude Van, gelardeerd met commentaar van Ada, lees je hoe hun incestueuze liefde jarenlange scheidingen, ontrouw, frequente bordeelbezoeken en het huwelijk van Ada doorstaat. Je in de surreële wereld van Ada verdiepen vergt tijd, maar wie volhoudt wacht een veelgelaagd en buitenissig boek dat garant staat voor urenlang leesplezier. Wie van literair speurwerk houdt, en zich verder in de vele betekenissen en, literaire en culturele verwijzingen van het boek wil ingraven, kan terecht op , waar je een van a tot z geannoteerde versie van Ada vindt. ...more

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Oct 19, 2015 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: nabokov-novels

One of the objects that immediately comes to mind when I think back to my childhood is a red rowboat exactly like the one in my avatar. That’s no coincidence of course as the avatar started out as an attempt at a symbolic ‘self-portrait’ based on personal memories. If there is coincidence here, it lies in the fact that a red row-boat called Souvenance is a recurrent memory for Van Veen, the narrator of Ada, or Ardor. I counted at least four mentions of that red rowboat with its mobile inlay of r ...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a fabulous and fanciful amorous dystopia. Right away, with his trial balloon: “All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike,” Vladimir Nabokov shows that his love story is a wicked and highly intellectual parody of everything, of all and sundry in literary world and especially of Leo Tolstoy with his disdainful arrogance of a falsely omniscient nobleman.
Paraphrasing his showy beginning of Anna Karenina: “Happy f Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a fabulous and fanciful amorous dystopia. Right away, with his trial balloon: “All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike,” Vladimir Nabokov shows that his love story is a wicked and highly intellectual parody of everything, of all and sundry in literary world and especially of Leo Tolstoy with his disdainful arrogance of a falsely omniscient nobleman.
Paraphrasing his showy beginning of Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Vladimir Nabokov lets us know that this ostentatious statement is just a hollow and preposterous generalization…

“I deduce,” said the boy, “three main facts: that not yet married Marina and her married sister hibernated in my lieu de naissance; that Marina had her own Dr. Krolik, pour ainsi dire; and that the orchids came from Demon who preferred to stay by the sea, his dark-blue great-grandmother.”
“I can add,” said the girl, “that the petal belongs to the common Butterfly Orchis; that my mother was even crazier than her sister; and that the paper flower so cavalierly dismissed is a perfectly recognizable reproduction of an early-spring sanicle that I saw in profusion on hills in coastal California last February. Dr. Krolik, our local naturalist, to whom you, Van, have referred, as Jane Austen might have phrased it, for the sake of rapid narrative information (you recall Brown, don’t you, Smith?), has determined the example I brought back from Sacramento to Ardis, as the Bear-Foot, B,E,A,R, my love, not my foot or yours, or the Stabian flower girl’s—an allusion, which your father, who, according to Blanche, is also mine, would understand like this” (American finger-snap). “You will be grateful,” she continued, embracing him, “for my not mentioning its scientific name. Incidentally the other foot—the Pied de Lion from that poor little Christmas larch, is by the same hand—possibly belonging to a very sick Chinese boy who came all the way from Barkley College.”

This baffling and brain-crushing conversation of two frivolous children smartly demonstrates that everything mocks everything else:
Butterflies mock flowers and orchids mock butterflies;
The absurd family tree mocks genealogy of monarchs;
Ada's supposed father’s death of exposure caused by running naked into the woods parodies the last days of Leo Tolstoy;
Beating the blackmailer with alpenstock mocks the Leon Trotsky’s murder;
Ada’s husband contracting tuberculosis in Switzerland, of all places, is a jeering allusion to The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.
Lucette’s suicide, while cruising on the transatlantic ship, the Tobakoff, is a funny reference to the catastrophic voyage of Titanic;
And so on ad infinitum.

Refuting the determinist’s statement more elegantly: unconsciousness, far from awaiting us, with flyback and noose, somewhere ahead, envelops both the Past and the Present from all conceivable sides, being a character not of Time itself but of organic decline natural to all things whether conscious of Time or not. That I know others die is irrelevant to the case. I also know that you, and, probably, I, were born, but that does not prove we went through the chronal phase called the Past: my Present, my brief span of consciousness, tells me I did, not the silent thunder of the infinite unconsciousness proper to my birth fifty-two years and 195 days ago.

Everything mocks everything else and only time is unique. Time doesn’t stand still. Time is an omnipresent hunter and in the end it always tracks us down… ...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aere-perennius, 2013

“Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

description

Incest, a game the Whole Family Can Play, NOT by Milton's blind Bradley®.

Part I:

There's a whole swath of novels I purchased in my twenties but knowing the authors' genius never felt quite ready to read (ah, tomorrow). It took me years to crack open ...more

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Feb 18, 2016 Violet wells rated it really liked it

“Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.”

First off, I should say this is my least favourite Nabokov novel. It’s an insanely clever novel and probably needs to be read at least twice to be fully appreciated, which is another way of saying it’s hard work. The first three chapters are virtually unreadable. It felt like arriving at someone’s door who “Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.”

First off, I should say this is my least favourite Nabokov novel. It’s an insanely clever novel and probably needs to be read at least twice to be fully appreciated, which is another way of saying it’s hard work. The first three chapters are virtually unreadable. It felt like arriving at someone’s door who clearly has no intention of allowing you into his house or even exchanging pleasantries. Ada is a novel that made me feel stupid as often as it thrilled me. It’s a kind of pun or parody festival and while I loved all the puns I got there were so many, often multilingual or literary jokes, that went over my head that at times I felt like I was watching University Challenge and horrible holes were being revealed in my intelligence, not a very flattering feeling.

Ada is presented (playfully) as the memoir of Dr. Ivan Veen, psychologist, professor of philosophy and student of time, who chronicles his illicit life-long love for his first cousin, later to be discovered sister, Ada Veen. It takes place in a mostly imaginative though usually recognisable world. Ada mischievously incorporates into its form just about every genre of literature – fairy story, historical fiction, science fiction, erotica, alternative history, biography, autobiography, literary criticism, essays and it even ends with a tongue in cheek review of itself. It also contains references to all Nabokov’s other novels, making it a kind of uber novel.

As is always the case you often feel there’s no other writer who revels in language with the same lithe exuberance as Nabokov. There are long passages and lots of them when Nabokov reminds you what a master stylist he is and what a sheer pleasure it is to read him. If I listed all my favourite quotes this review would be about ten pages long. It’s also a fabulous antidote to the dubious and often crass or pretentious nature of sex description in literature. Nabokov never strikes an off note in his depiction of erotic pleasure and often he manages to be wildly funny to boot.

Perhaps Ada herself never quite comes alive except as male wish fulfilment?

In short, a novel I will return to when I’m older and (hopefully) wiser.
...more

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Apr 25, 2008 Karen rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Karen by: Anthony Michael

Oh man, what can I say about this book? Just that I could probably reread Ada, and only Ada, for the rest of my life and still feel satisfied. For the most part, I read this book the way I usually read the first time around - that is, superficially, just trying to make general sense of what's going on and enjoying the sexy parts (of which there are many) - but on the few occasions that I sat down and made an effort to decipher the puns and allusions, things just started to click into place, and ...more

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Nov 20, 2008 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, science-fiction

Suppose things had worked out better for Humbert Humbert. Suppose he'd gone to jail for a while but hadn't had a heart attack there, and suppose Lolita hadn't died while still a teenager, giving birth to a stillborn child. Suppose instead that they'd both survived, had various sordid adventures, and then miraculously reconnected twenty years later, at which point they suddenly realised that they had some something beautiful and unique together. And suppose that Humbert actually wrote his memoirs ...more

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Mar 13, 2012 nostalgebraist rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, pomo-fiction, nabokov, sf, fantasy, favorites, unreliable-narrators-yesss

I have trouble writing positive reviews. It's precisely when I love a book that I most strongly feel how little justice my words can do to the experience of reading it, which is how I end up writing reviews like this.

Nonetheless, Ada deserves a review. I'm not a very widely read person, and I rarely feel justified in saying that anything I've read is not read often enough. (How would I know? Maybe everyone else is just off reading other books that are even better.) But I really do believe that A ...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1-read-on-hand, 4-star, reviewed, r-2013, r-goodreads, ever-on

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."

...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Warwick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, incest, united-states, russia, speculative-fiction

Ada or Ardor is Nabokov's biggest novel, and in many ways a summation of his linguistic dexterity as well as his literary themes, with all the pleasures and problems those things imply.

His writing is a constant astonishment. His admirers are sometimes surprised to remember that it's not to everyone's tastes. Nabokov's sentences are exact, yet often long and complicated; they are utterly stripped of cliché; they are very alert to such pleasures as assonance, alliteration, sesquipedalianism and cr ...more

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Apr 16, 2009 Geoff rated it really liked it

Stylistically and structurally, Ada is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Isn't that the joy of reading Nabokov anyway, the joy of watching a master at work? The seeming ease of his complicated prose, the assimilation of polyglot, portmonteau words, annagrammitic tricks, haute vocabulary, allusion, and labyrinthine sentences, is really a wonder. The first 200 or so pages of this book are absolutely hypnotizing. Ada is a parody of the modern novel, from Anna Karenina to Lolita, and its most obvious prece Stylistically and structurally, Ada is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Isn't that the joy of reading Nabokov anyway, the joy of watching a master at work? The seeming ease of his complicated prose, the assimilation of polyglot, portmonteau words, annagrammitic tricks, haute vocabulary, allusion, and labyrinthine sentences, is really a wonder. The first 200 or so pages of this book are absolutely hypnotizing. Ada is a parody of the modern novel, from Anna Karenina to Lolita, and its most obvious precedent is Joyce's Ulysses (but it is informed by texts as old as the Arabian Nights). Both Ulysses and Ada are episodic and epic, they both move in Aristotle's "epic time" as well as within the "perceived time" unfolding in each episode (time is really the fourth main character of this book, along with Van and Lucette, time and memory are as everpresent as Ada's dark eyes), and they both deal with how perception is registered as it passes and becomes reflections and refractions within consciousness. The structure of both novels reflect their subject matter (in the case of Ada, the five chronological parts of the book are each about half the length of the part preceding, much like our perception of time "speeding up" as we age, until it coalesces into just a few lingering, single, momentary impressions). It is a parody of romantic love stories, a parody of the erotic novel (and there is much grand eros in this book, the incidents of the children's copulation reaching upwards of double digits in a single day), and a parody of Nabokov's literary career (characters from his previous works appear or are "reworked", and Ada herself is obviously based on his most famous nymphet, also the structure is something reminiscent of The Gift). It is also a parody of scientific texts, texts that try to explain such capacious themes as time, memory, and perception "definitively", in supposed, and unachievable, "objective terms". Van Veen's "The Texture of Time" may come off as a messy rant, but it does speak to the way that human beings naturally perceive the passing days more than any scientific trope can hope to.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is the almost secondary way that it invokes science fiction. You realize from very early on (I had to read the first three chapters a number of times each to gain a reference point on this particular reality) that this love story is unfolding on an alterior Earth, not Terra, but Anti-Terra, not Gaia but Demonia. Demonia is informed by our Earth (or the inverse could be true), there are similar nationalities, similar histories and wars, similar languages, but the continents did not split at the same fissures, Russia and America are continentally connected (anyone want to start invoking authorial biographical references at this point? I do not) and famous figures exist, but at anachronistic points, or with annagrammatically altered names. Demonians read Joyce and Rimbaud in the 1860's, the Crimean War is an ongoing world affair, and Russia and America never felt the cultural schisms of the twentieth century. Yet our Earth does play a role, Terra is dreamed of by philosophers and madmen, equivalent to our concepts of Heaven or Nirvana. Zealous religous and revolutionary groups are formed and technology is occasionally banned and destroyed in the name of this most likely fictional paradise, but all of this is background, all of this is canvas on which Van and Ada's lifelong story is painted. But it does invoke the novel as a particular entity. Like Anti-Terra, a creative work is a world unto its own, informed and in some ways defined by our reality, but only inhabiting, and only true to, its own physical structure, its own content, its own and only reality. Demonia is the world of literature. Its heroes have literary precedents, its actions are taken from multiple ur-texts, and in the end this is a novel about novels as much as it is about time or love or Vaniada.

The problem is that while the prose is masterful, ecstatic, motley, and sardonic, the characters themselves are surprisingly monochromatic. Ada almost feels like a virtuoso performance by Nabokov rather than a story invested by its characters. I suppose it could just be a trait specific to Demonians that they are only motivated by intellectual obsessions and monstrous libidos, but it does matter, when a reader is asked to feel something like empathy with the lovers toward the end of the novel, that this reader could not really conjure any. The novel is impressive in its conception and artfulness, but its emotional world is distancing. It is a great labyrinth by a great constucter of labyrinths, but a rounded character is a rounded character, in this world or the next, and I was left wanting that.
...more

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Oct 30, 2015 J.G. Keely rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, reviewed, novel

I came to a strange realization while reading this book: that practically every instance I can think of where an author used an unreliable narrator, it's always the same character: he's an intelligent, introspective guy with a slight cynical mean streak, a man with a fairly high opinion of himself (which is constantly reaffirmed by the world around him)--he succeeds without trying too hard, usually in a number of fields, though the success never lasts (because where would the plot go if it did?) ...more

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Oct 20, 2007 Summer rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Oh man, sometimes goodreads really weirds me out, like just now when I read all of these really well-written slams or relative-slams of this book. This book to me is so beautiful and lush and rich. I pick it up all the time and read favorite pages or phrases over again; it makes me feel full. It's romantic and strange. The tedium of parts of it just reminds me of the tedium of real-life. I fucking love the shit out of this book, y'all. ...more

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May 28, 2016 Perry rated it really liked it

Full of Lust 'n ... Genetic Combustion

Constructed with brilliance and complexity and including maybe Nabokov's most radiant, gorgeous writing, the novel runs from 1884 through 1967, covering such heady themes as the texture of time.

Unfortunately, this presented an even higher hurdle for my moral prejudices than Lolita, believe it or not. Perhaps, it's in the way the topic (incest) was approached.

In 1884, deadpan Van is 14 and precious lil' Ada is 12. They believe themselves to be first cousins ...more

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Oct 28, 2014 Anthony Vacca rated it liked it · review of another edition

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is not my favorite Nabokov, but, yes, a Nabokov is a Nabokov, so naturally it is preternaturally well-written, is fluent in more languages than you, is better read than you, dresses better, eats better, exercises more, dates all the guys or girls you’re too nervous to talk to, never has to worry about money, is always healthier than you, can hold its liquor better than you can, all in all, is better than you—and knows it too.

Apparently Nabokov was working on two Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is not my favorite Nabokov, but, yes, a Nabokov is a Nabokov, so naturally it is preternaturally well-written, is fluent in more languages than you, is better read than you, dresses better, eats better, exercises more, dates all the guys or girls you’re too nervous to talk to, never has to worry about money, is always healthier than you, can hold its liquor better than you can, all in all, is better than you—and knows it too.

Apparently Nabokov was working on two separate projects—one, a playful pisstake of Proust and James and other 19th century writers of bloated sentences; the other, his deep, deep thoughts about Time and (fuck) Space—when the great idea came to him to cram all of it together between two covers. The end result is a deliberately overlong and exhaustively minute novel about a wunderkind brother and sister and their nearly century-long incestuous affair on a parallel planet that (possibly) exists in conjunction with ours. Now I am no puritan or prude, in fact my taste in art probably reveals me as something of a pervert (an aesthetic pervert!), but even though the sentences are acrobatic about depicting acrobatic underage banging (Van and Ada Veen’s illicit behavior begins at age 15 and 12, respectively), the sentences just don't pack the fury and longing of Lolita or the madness and fetishism of Pale Fire. While those two masterpieces were all about momentum and suspense wrapped in velvet prose, Ada’s prose ponders, meanders, whistles while strolling with hands in pockets.

But, naturally, Nabokov knows this, and I begrudgingly admit that he impressively brings all the bloat together with a pretty damn legit dénouement that is part essay on memory and part metafictional extravaganza (this book is a layer cake of subtle, intoxicating frameworking). And yet, like I said before, not my favorite Nabokov. Recommended for diehard Nabokovians only, or for those readers who like their incest erotica written in ornate, erudite flushes of never-ending sentences and packed with pages and pages of contemplative chin-stroking on the nature of Time.
...more

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Aug 03, 2018 Hakan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

ada ya da arzu, lolita ve solgun ateş’ten geçtikten sonra ulaşılacak zirve. nabokov’un başyapıtlarının başyapıtı bu anlamda ve aynı zamanda nabokov okurluğunun da ustalığını şart koşuyor. ilk elli sayfa da böyle bir sınav var adeta: lolita’yı irkilerek, bir direnç oluşturarak mı okudunuz, burada kat kat fazlasıyla karşılaşacaksınız. solgun ateş’in aslında kolay okunan bir roman olduğunu düşüneceksiniz. sonrasında bitip tükensin istemeyeceğiniz ve zaten bitmeyecek, tükenmeyecek bir şölen başlayac ...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Jeff Jackson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nabokov

I.
"Nabokov is an unsettling writer as well as a funny one because he is deep where he looks shallow, moving when he seems flippant." - Michael Wood, The Magician's Doubts

II.
I've read most of Nabokov's novels and purposefully saved Ada for the end of my initial run. I'm glad I did because I needed the goodwill I'd built up to get through the first 30+ pages which are the most difficult and unappealing of his career. They're fastidiously baroque, smugly preening, and difficult to follow. Almost ...more

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Jan 20, 2015 Simona Cosma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

O poveste scandaloasă despre oameni inteligenţi.
Van Veen şi Ada Veen, doi fraţi după tată crescuti de familii diferite, doi copii cu o inteligenţă absolut uluitoare, se îndrăgostesc unul de celălat, iar romanul urmăreşte zbuciumata lor iubire interzisă pe un interval de aproape un secol, până ce aceştia vor trece la cele veşnice.
În cele aproape 600 de pagini descoperim un veritabil poem în proză despre iubire fără limite sociale sau morale, despre căutare, regăsire şi geniu.
În mod suprinzător, ...more

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May 29, 2016 MJ Nicholls marked it as sampled

“This interminable book is written in dense, erudite, alliterative, punsome, pore-clogging prose; and every character, without exception, sounds like late Henry James.” — Martin Amis

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Jun 26, 2015 Chrissie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015-read, audible, love, philo-psychol, magic, favorites

Before reading:
Do I dare try this? It looks hard to understand. Disturbing subject too.

********************
On finishing:
The book is amazing. There is absolutely no question about that! Did I love all of it? No. Sometimes I was completely lost, and that just isn’t fun. I didn't understand some lines, but that is due to my own lack of knowledge, not any fault of the book. Take note - the first four chapters are pretty much incomprehensible. Don't quit too soon. No other parts are this difficult. Before reading:
Do I dare try this? It looks hard to understand. Disturbing subject too.

********************
On finishing:
The book is amazing. There is absolutely no question about that! Did I love all of it? No. Sometimes I was completely lost, and that just isn’t fun. I didn't understand some lines, but that is due to my own lack of knowledge, not any fault of the book. Take note - the first four chapters are pretty much incomprehensible. Don't quit too soon. No other parts are this difficult.

Do I recommend it to all? Definitely not. Am I glad I read it? Absolutely! So who might like this book? People like me.....but I don't even know myself well. So who is that? I am going to try and explain the different aspects and themes of the book.

This is in fact a book of science fiction, and surprise, surprise, I think it is great. I don’t read science fiction! This proves there is an exception to every rule I make for myself. Let me explain. It is set in an imaginary world. Our "real" world exists too, as a twin world, or at least so some think. The history of our world is cleverly, perfectly intertwined with Nabokov’s invented world, but just little bits. The story is set in Nabokov's invented world Antiterra where both Americas are united under one ruler. The languages spoken are English, French and Russian. The British Empire exists too, ruled by a King Victor, but he controls all of Europe and Africa. Electricity? No, it isn't used; instead water is the energy source! This invented world is detailed so you understand how it functions. The inventions are consistently play-on-words. No telegrams, but “hydrograms” instead. Have you noted the name of the King? Victor, what else?! Nabokov plays with his readers through the objects, words and names he invents.In this book you are constantly playing with languages. Why is that word chosen? That is the question you repeatedly ask.

I’d like to call this a book of science fiction for intellectuals. There are two central characters - Van will become a psychologist and Ada a dramatist. Both are well educated. It starts when they are 14 and 12 respectively, in 1884. That is when the story really gets going. It is a “love-at-first-sight” love affair. Immediate attraction. They are cousins, but discover quickly they are in fact brother and sister. Lucette, their half-sister, is emotionally involved too. What we are reading is Van’s memoirs written when he is a nonagenarian, so in the 1960s. Ada’s notes and an unidentified editor are involved too. No wonder you are sometimes confused! The story isn’t just about love; it is filled with scientific minutia. Literary works pepper the writing. Plants and butterflies and bugs, diseases and anatomical body parts, books and authors and philosophical ideas of our world are all here in Nabokov’s invented world too. They are beautifully displayed …..and then playfully tweaked. When you follow the lines and get lost it is quite simply because you don't know enough! The whole book is a puzzle, a mystery, but one that has no final solution. It is a game to play for a while.

Sex is the central theme of the book, be it the copulation of animals, butterflies or people, but the tone of the writing changes, shifts, bounces to fit the message. Disturbing, gorgeous, erotic, sensual, amusing. There is incest and there is love. Aging and relationships too. Time - there is a whole section on time. Surprisingly, this section is not hard to understand. This is a perfect example of how the tone flips. I cannot think of another writer this talented.

Many lines are untranslated. To see the humor and Nabokov’s cleverness you must know languages. Or let’s put it this way, the more you know the more you will enjoy. My Latin is weak. I don’t know Russian; I bet I would have understood more if I did. An understanding of French is important for this book.

The audiobok is narrated by Arthur Morey. He uses one tone for all the females, but anyway you must always listen carefully to ever single word so it doesn't matter. He reads slowly, which is essential. His French totally sucks. I cannot judge his Russian. You don't have to avoid the audiobook because of his narration.

So I have given you the themes. I have explained how Nabokov plays with words - English and French and Russian and Italian and German and Latin. The more you know the more you will understand. It is also helpful to have already read Speak, Memory. I must give this book five stars because I find it utterly amazing. It is not a book where you judge the thoughts presented, but rather a book to have fun with by exploring ideas. It is a mind-puzzle book, a book of word acrobatics.
...more

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Oct 30, 2016 Teresa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: n-russia, y-1001bymrbyd, e4

«Ada é o livro pelo qual eu gostaria de ser lembrado depois da minha morte.»
[Vladimir Nabokov]

Por mim será lembrado como um dos livros mais difíceis que já li. Perdi-me no labirinto de referências literárias, históricas e geográficas, camufladas por jogos de palavras, anagramas (por exemplo, as Notas são de Vivian Darkbloom - que é dos poucos que consegui decifrar), nomes inventados para pessoas reais e um sem fim de frases de que não apreendi o sentido. Ah, e o capítulo quatro sobre o Tempo e o ...more

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May 27, 2019 Maila rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: regali-di-laurea-2018, owned-read, distopia-e-fantascienza, erotico, l-stati-uniti, l-russia, xx-1960-1969, xx-secolo, big-books, 1001-libridaleggereprimadimorire

Temo che molti piccoli dettagli di questo romanzo siano sfuggiti alla mia comprensione, ciò nonostante l’ho adorato con ardore.
Credo, infatti, che questo sia uno dei libri dalla scrittura più complessa ai quali mi sia mai avvicinata. Una scrittura a dir poco magnifica (inchino a Nabokov fino a toccarmi gli stinchi con la fronte), che già avevo apprezzato fino all'innamoramento in Lolita, ma che qui viene adornata (e anche un po' appesantita, a onor del vero) con tanti orpelli che ho trovato talv ...more

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Dec 02, 2016 Ailsa rated it liked it

Shelves: long

A bit rich for my blood.
Walk away with the feeling Nabokov is a genius and I am peasant who barely skates the surface of the English language.
Will reread in 20 years when I am more erudite and sophisticated.
This reading guide was invaluable to understanding the 98% of the tri-lingual puns and obscure literary references that went completely over my head. (Does anyone actually read Chateaubriand?)
Totally inspired now to read Mansfield Park again purely for the incest. ...more

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Aug 26, 2020 Paul Dembina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Nabakov operates at a different level to most authors. Here we have an extraordinary amount of puns and word play (sometimes crossing languages)
I don't pretend to understand all the references but identified quite enough (with the help of the Notes provided by "Vivian Darkbloom") to make this a most satisfying read. ...more

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May 14, 2014 Ana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: a-little-historical, borrowed, brainy-psychological, classics, made-me-cry, of-family, of-life-and-death, of-self

I don't even know how to classify this book. Is it science-fiction? It has elements of that genre, yes. Is it fantasy? Sure, it might be, at a very subtle level. Is it magical realism? Damn it, it has traits of that one too. What is it? What? I don't know. But I feel like I've been baptized into Nabokov's style with it. It's my first book of his and I honestly can't wait to get each of his other ones and drown in them.

At certain points, especially in the beginning and in the fourth part of it, I don't even know how to classify this book. Is it science-fiction? It has elements of that genre, yes. Is it fantasy? Sure, it might be, at a very subtle level. Is it magical realism? Damn it, it has traits of that one too. What is it? What? I don't know. But I feel like I've been baptized into Nabokov's style with it. It's my first book of his and I honestly can't wait to get each of his other ones and drown in them.

At certain points, especially in the beginning and in the fourth part of it, I felt like giving up. It was so hard to read, I was trudging on by sheer will power, thinking that there must be a way this proves worthy, it's Nabokov, it has to teach me something. And it did. I also had outer motivation to finish it, but at some point, it stopped being about that. I simply had to finish it. I had to find out what's happening. Of course, there were moments when I wished it was simpler, more concise, rather than flamboyant and peacockish, but with such a big author like Nabokov, you either gulf his writing down or you can't take it. I'm proud I was able to make it to the end and also that a thing that rarely happens to me came true: I wanted to immediately start again with it. I'm not a big re-reader, probably because my experience with books is limited and I still haven't reached the point of saturation, but it just happens that I badly want to take this on again.

Remember I said this might be SF or fantasy, for all I know? Well, this book's world is a place called Demonia, or sometimes Antiterra. It looks a lot like Earth and definitely gives the feeling of familiarity, but it's not the normal world we all have lived in. Just to give you a few details, the USA is composed of both Americas, North and South, and the three languages spoken there are primarily Russian, second French and third English. This gargantuan state has been discovered by... you wouldn't guess, Africans. As to what happened to our world, it's a complicated story. As much as I understood, Nabokov hints that Earth exists and that some people believe in it, almost like a cult or a religion. You don't know this from the start. The whole book resembles more of a jigsaw puzzle, obliging the reader to combine details that he found scattered throughout the entire lenght of it. At one point, some details are so absurd that you get confused as to what you previously knew about the entire setting, and you go back to check if it isn't just your imagination jesting you.

The two main characters of this story are Van and Ada, two beings destined for tragedy. They meet for the first time at Ada's house, a manor, when he is 14 and she is 12. Now, here comes the very intriguining and interesting part. As young as they are, they fall in love with each other and so begins their their tragedy. (view spoiler) The erotic element is a frontispiece for the purest affection. As always, authentic feeling is preceeded by animalic desire, transforming the two kids into sex-driven machines and kindling a fire in their bodies as they hunger for each other. They do it all the time, anywhere, risking their reputations, careless as to what the world has to say about their affair. This passion seems a bit out of the line, when you take their age into consideration, but the incestuos relationship comes to detail them deeper than anything else. Their love takes form in the detriment of the outer world, and their lonely selves find each other with eternal gaiety. They become - and will be, for the rest of their lives, no matter what happens - inseparable in soul.

The entire book follows them through both ups and downs, separations lasting years and explosions of erotism lasting days, since they are mere kids until they become aged and frail, when their love transforms into something else, something deeper and more meaningful.

I don't know what I can spoil of it, because it's written in such an animated and theatrical way that it builds up on its past pages. As difficult as it is, reading it offers a substantial reward, when you get used with it.

I honestly didn't expect Nabokov's writing to be so labyrinthine. You can find extremely pretentious imagery depicted and all the sensorial descriptions are elongated for the pure pleasure (it so seems) of using more expressive words. His dialogue is just as entangled as his prose is. Very vivid, lively lines that make the characters stand out of the dusty shelves of memory. Whenever they argue, its acidity is obviously underlined, while when Van and Ada are alone, it quiets down to a murmur, with inebriated words of love and familiarity. It is this particularity that gives the book its infinite setting - the way each personae swims through its nature and melts withing its borders. There is no world without Van and Ada and none of the two would be themselves without the world. The whole thing is written like a memoir, but interrupted by present, future and past. Van is ninety and dying of cancer when he decides to tell the story of their love and that shows through the kind remembrance of his and Ada's young selves at play. At the same time, there is another epoch to this story, something I would like to call "infinity". Their relation is not a time-bound connection; even if it's restricted by their life span, it's not supressed by it. They resemble eternal beings, while also being pitifully human. But, after all, what is infinity to man? His life, because that is the only clock that man hears ticking.

However important their love story is for this work, it's not the only thing that defines it. Nabokov touches many, if not all, of the important themes human kind has been debating on for as long as speech existed. It requires knowledge of death, religion, love, hatred, passion, erotism, the condition of man in the Universe and his ever-lasting search for answers, as well as developments on his personal conceptions. Probably the most important theme that the writer disentagled for the reader is time. He's a very sensible author, in the way that he can transcribe his fears and feelings onto paper because of his ability to open up and imbibe with emotion. It's rather raw, unrefined, but it gives depth to the setting's atmosphere.

I am more than happy to have read this and would recommend it to anyone. As much as it spawned in me the unstoppable desire to read more of Nabokov, it can be a great incursion into the mind of a writer who is more than a classic of our era. As hard as it is, there is no point where you find it boring - it's just strenous, not placid. The writing is graphic, Nabokov's mind is sharp and the world he believed in was eloquently put on paper, so we would believe in it too.

...more

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Jun 27, 2020 Luís rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-readings, classics, romance, russia

Ada or ardour is a family chronicle.
It is written in the third person by the hero and protagonist van Veen.
He was almost 90 years old at the time of writing this column.
Van Veen, 14, will meet staying at the Château d'Ardis, near Ladore, an incredible estate, a true childhood paradise. There, he will meet these cousins Ada and Lucette. Ada and van are two precocious children, endowed with extraordinary intelligence. They will live an intense and sensual passion will last their entire life.
Nabo ...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Annette rated it did not like it

Shelves: general-fiction, literature-russian

I honestly don't understand the hype about this book. I hated it. No, I really did.

I think I've only abandoned 2 books in my whole life - for some reason I stick with them, even when I'm not enjoying them. Don't ask me why; it's some perverse thing I do. I always think they're going to get better but sometimes they don't. So I stuck with Ada and foolishly kissed goodbye to many hours of my life I can never get back.

Whilst Lolita is one of my all time favourite books, I found Ada to be a mishmas ...more

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May 25, 2018 Roman Clodia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Ardis Hall - the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis - this is the leitmotiv rippling through Ada, an ample and delightful chronicle whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America - for are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams?

This self-reflective commentary on the book we have just read is just one instance of the literary games Nabokov plays throughout this complex, challenging text. What really makes the book ...more

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Oct 05, 2017 Sarah rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2017-classics-challenge

541 pages in to a 589 page book and I simply can't read the rest. I kept going for awhile because I was hoping to get to the "masterpiece" part. Nope. I didn't care for this at all. The language was beautiful but I simply didn't care about the characters. ...more

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About Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

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Russian: Владимир Владимирович Набоков .

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist. 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 a big interest in chess problems.

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“And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.” — 133 likes

“Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.” — 92 likes

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