Mention Regarding Books Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
| Title | : | Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle |
| Author | : | Vladimir Nabokov |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 604 pages |
| Published | : | February 19th 1990 by Vintage (first published 1969) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Cultural. Russia. Literature |
Vladimir Nabokov
Paperback | Pages: 604 pages Rating: 4.15 | 9068 Users | 687 Reviews
Ilustration In Favor Of Books Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
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 no less than the superb work of an imagination at white heat.This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.
Identify Books To Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
| Original Title: | Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle |
| ISBN: | 0679725229 (ISBN13: 9780679725220) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Van Veen, Ada Veen, Lucette Veen, Demon Veen |
| Setting: | Demonia or Antiterra |
Rating Regarding Books Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Ratings: 4.15 From 9068 Users | 687 ReviewsCrit Regarding Books Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
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.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
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.
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
Full of Lust 'n ... Genetic CombustionConstructed 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
perhaps the ultimate desert island book, one that can be read over and over, tweaking out the genealogies, luxuriating in the steamy, fumbling sex of pre-teens, trying to keep up with the uncles and dads via flashbacks, saddened by sickness, mind fevers, hitler, and the just-bad-luck of bojo soviet canada. does this not make sense? well welcome welcome. and for my next trick, WALKING ON MY HANDS!it's as if david foster wallace somehow was really born in st petersberg and fled in 1919 and after
To write a review of Ada is almost impossible except to say that it is the book in which Nabokov, the greatest prose stylist in English, uses his mastery of the language and his great knowledge of European literary history to his greatest extent and evidently enjoys himself! The whole book is choc-a-bloc with word-play, literary puzzles, allusions to other works, hidden quotations, alliteration, streams of consciousness, history, science fiction, dollops of French, helpings of Russian, laces of
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