The words are like perfect little crystals that form perfect paragraphs that coagulate into crystal chapters like perfect short stories that crystallize into Ada or Ardor. You need to tune your mind to this book, to its vibration frequency, but after a perfect connection is made your mind will be changed forever.

head hurts

Perhaps my taste in books has subtly shifted since I last read a Nabokov; perhaps this is an unusually poor novel by his standards; whichever, I found Ada hard work.

Central to my enjoyment of his other novels is the dizzying sugar-rush of his prose style. And key to that style is a certain amount of self-indulgence. But here the self-indulgent language games almost sink the book - there's a never-ending procession of smug puns, alliteration, parodies of other novels, passages in French and Russian, and so on. All of which is very *clever* (and I did enjoy some passages) but it never achieves the transcendental beauty or elegance of his better writing. It's artful, not art.

Also,and I think this needs to be said: previously I've given Nabokov a pass over this, but here's *another* novel about having sex with a 12-year old girl, and at this point I'm beginning to find the theme both boring and creepy. And here, unlike in Lolita, he often seems to be inviting us to love and admire his paedophilic protagonist.

I just finished "Ada, or Ardor," (I have been reading a lot of nonfiction simultaneously). I need some time to mull it over a bit and I plan on reading a few critical articles on it in the coming week, but as of now I would give it a solid 9/10, potentially a 9.5 as I look back on it and turn it over more.

First and foremost it is simply beautiful. It's language, imagery and word play are endless in scope as well as depth. It is written passionately and tenderly throughout in a way that apotheosizes love and the power of imagination (to borrow some words from a review). It is strange in its aspects as a kind of half way sci-fiction in a world much like ours but not quite the same, perhaps a kind of alternative history. Van and Ada live in a world where Russia and America appear to have been joined for some time and where, after some great catastrophe we never learn about, electricity has been banned (they use dorophones instead of telephones, for example). There are religious differences that don't amount to much other than indicating that they are not our own ("By log, what have you done?"). They also discuss the possibility of another metaphysical world, called Terra (they live on Anti-Terra), which is subject to some of the same speculation as the afterlife, and yet it is often treated as a psychological question and thus obviously an extended metaphor for art as well as potentially being our world. Through all of this is a truly powerful story of love, "troubled by incest" and a quest to understand the nature of time. Ultimately it is a powerful and beautiful piece work from one of history's finest writers.

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."

I think this is one of the best books I've ever read. Nabokov is a true user of language (multiple languages, that is), he plays with language the way it deserves. I found some of the vocabulary intimidating but with a dictionary handy I made my way through the book happily. The story, at times, muddled and complicated, was captivating although I didn't connect with any of the characters. The coolest part about it, was that it didn't matter! I ate the story up as a third party fly on the wall, and didn't need more than that to appreciate it. I'm glad I powered through the confusing first few chapters, this book is a masterpiece. Truly.

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 talvolta ammirevoli, talaltra indecifrabili. Ossia, oltre ai termini a me sconosciuti riscontrati quasi ad ogni pagina (es. della prima pagina: “mescolandosi granoblasticamente”; es. della seconda pagina: “clima alcionio”; ecc. - una bella passeggiatina nei sentieri della mia ignoranza), possono trovarsi costantemente citazioni, riferimenti ironici a personaggi reali e di finzione, giochi di parole, di cui neanche la metà vengono decifrati nelle corpose note poste alla fine del volume. Molti, i più facili, li ho intuiti da sola, con la mia scarna cultura. Tantissimi altri sono rimasti per me avvolti nel mistero, anche perché non avevo intenzione di fare una ricerca su internet potenzialmente priva di risultati ogni due e tre, interrompendo il flusso della lettura più volte ad ogni pagina.
Ci sono addirittura frasi in codice da decifrare, come quelle a pagina 172. Fortunatamente poco dopo il codice ci viene spiegato e io non ho potuto resistere, ho dovuto decriptare quelle poche parole (è stato divertente).

Di cosa parla Ada o ardore? Solitamente non scelgo mai i libri da leggere in base alla trama, perché mi piace essere colta di sorpresa in tal senso. Preferisco informarmi sulle atmosfere del libro, sulla sua difficoltà o leggerezza, sui contenuti per tematiche, per capire se è qualcosa che ho voglia di leggere in quel dato momento. Ho preso questo libro soprattutto perché è Nabokov, ma anche perché mi piacevano il titolo e la copertina, lo ammetto. Sapevo solo che si trattava di una cronaca familiare, come dice anche il sottotitolo, e di una storia d’amore. Ebbene, Ada o ardore è un'ucronia e soprattutto una storia d’amore incestuosa (a Vladimir evidentemente piacciono le tematiche pruriginose, quelle che mettono in crisi la nostra morale). Immaginate il mio stupore e disorientamento quando ho letto l’incipit:

«Tutte le famiglie felici sono più o meno diverse tra loro; le famiglie infelici sono tutte più o meno uguali» dice un grande scrittore russo al principio di un famoso romanzo [...].

Il celebre incipit di Anna Karenina viene ribaltato, perché qui ci troviamo su Antiterra, un mondo dove parecchie cose sono rimaste uguali al nostro e tante altre hanno preso una piega storica differente. N., a quanto pare, ha unito due idee diverse per due libri diversi - uno di carattere fantascientifico, l'altro una trattazione sul tempo - in un unico risultato. In ogni caso l’aspetto ucronico del romanzo passa per lo più in secondo piano, mentre preponderante è la storia di Ada e del protagonista Van che si srotola nel Tempo, al quale, in un tributo proustiano e bergsoniano, viene dedicato un'intero capitolo di riflessioni filosofiche.
Erotismo (che erotismo!), poesia e sentimento si mescolano.
Il narratore, lo stesso Van a 97 anni, scrive in terza persona, ma ogni tanto se lo dimentica e scrive qualcosa in prima. Come se non bastasse, di tanto in tanto, soprattutto tra parentesi, compaiono i commenti e le note a margine della Ada ultra novantenne, la quale ad esempio dissente dalla narrazione dei fatti o elogia la scrittura del suo amato. Le intenzioni di N. vengono svelate per bocca di Van sul finire del romanzo:

«[...] Il mio fine era quello di creare una specie di novella in forma di trattato sulla Tessitura del Tempo, di un'indagine sulla sua sostanza impalpabile, con metafore illustrative sempre più fitte che edificassero molto gradualmente una storia d'amore logica, dal passato al presente, capace di fiorire come una storia concreta, e di annullare poi, sempre per gradi, ogni analogia, fino a disintegrarsi di nuovo in blanda astrazione»
«Mi chiedo,» disse Ada «mi chiedo se queste scoperte valgano di più di una manciata di vetri colorati. Noi possiamo conoscere il tempo giorno per giorno, possiamo conoscere un tempo. Non potremo mai conoscere il Tempo. I nostri sensi non sono atti alla sua percezione. È come...».

Questo capitolo finisce così, coi puntini di sospensione di Ada.

Voto: 4.5
Da assaporare con lentezza.

I have been waiting forever to write this review, because this book took forever to read, and I recommend it to no one. The premise is clearly cringe, but I thought it would be interesting to try Nabokov's most difficult book (it wasn't) and I had a used copy I got for cheap/free withought reading the back because it was the perfect book texture.

Some books are difficult and add complexity and that makes it worth it. Some are difficult because the author gets off on being sufferable and their ego has been stroked for decades. This is the latter. If you need to include an appendix to explain every little wordplay, you are not doing well. The plot was absolutely wild, in a way that wasn't compelling. Van is this weird renaissance man fuck boy, and it didn’t make sense, but the Lucette plot is what really pushed me over (yikes, that wording was not on purpose). It was constantly misogynist and, not shockingly, racist. The world building was bizarre and barely drafted. It's post electricity, but also older, and what happened with the countries and the language, and if these are so important you gotta give us something. And to top it off, IT WAS INSUFFERABLY BORING.

I'm also EXTREMELY concerned about how children are depicted. Despite pop culture's take, Lolita does an incredible job at making clear the man is a creep and what he's doing is not consensual and that Lolita is a child. But here... it just read like he really, really, enjoyed sexualizing children. It was extremely disturbing and not adding to anything. I'll defend Lolita til the end, but this felt like a pedophile writing a book (I really should have trusted my gut and put it down after like two chapters, because once I was in I was too stubborn with the challenge).

And just when you think the book is done, there is an entire section that's pure philosophy. I skimmed through a lot of the later chapters, but couldn't even pretend here. If there were themes that tied to book together in it, I do not care enough.

This is possibly the only book I actively regret reading.

This is one of those books that came in sideways and blindsided me with adoration. I loved it. I expected to LIKE it. I expected a level (rather high level, actually) of deviancy, I expected sex, and I expected overly verbose, didactic passages that weaved between plot. All of that was present, and how. But, beyond that I found that I really cared about these characters, necessary and ancillary, despite all their glaring flaws. In brief, since a description of this novel is nearly impossible in my inadequate words, this is the story of a one Van Veen and his lifelong love affair with his sister Ada Veen. The story is told in five parts starting in the year 1884 when the protagonist and titular character meet. He is an intelligent fourteen, already believing himself a man, and she is a precocious eleven. They believe they are cousins in a already twisted family tree, but soon discover they are both the product of the long affair between her mother, Marina, and his father, Demon. One would think this new information would put a pause of their already sexual relationship, but as he later states; they were young and they simply didn't care, and then it was too late. The rest of the story has them meet, meet again, be forced apart, but never forget each other.

But then this is the plot and doesn't even begin to cover what the book is really "about". It's also a beautifully crafted meditation on time and memory. Each part of the novel is half the length of the previous, with Part One (often, so I read, considered the last great Russian novel, and it does read with the same fervency as the likes of Tolstoy) taking up approximately half of this six hundred paged tome. 'Ada', also, seems to meditate on literature itself, following melodramatic patterns of great novels but never failing to add elements of the absurd. And don't get me wrong; there were parts of this story that had me laughing out loud.

There's also the setting. This is not science fiction or fantasy, not in my estimation, but it does take place in a sort of parallel universe, on a planet called Demonia or, often, Antiterra. The existance of Terra (our world) is a perception left to superstition and religion (though the later element is wisely left out of a book with this sort of plot). The majority of Europe is part of England, while North America has been divided by the French and Russians into Canady (French) and Estoty (Russian). Asia is a wild place called Tartary. Antiterra is much like our world, with small exceptions.

'Ada, or Ardor' is a notoriously difficult book to read. The first four chapters are hard to get through and Part Four, essentially a dictated essay written by Van on Time melded briefly into his final re-connection with Ada, was arduous though rewarding. But, barring those examples, this book was enormously satisfying and will likely sit on my shelf as one of my favorite novels of all time.