An incestuous affair not for all the family

What did you like best about Ada, or Ardor? What did you like least?

It`s a brilliantly imagined fictitious world with its own history, culture and inventions. The characters are not especially sympathetic but the reader is drawn into their strange universe and views their fascinating lives up close.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Ada, or Ardor?

There is a scene by the swimming pool at the beginning of the second fateful summer when the protagonist, Van, is witness to his beloved`s tangled relationships with three different men yet fails to penetrate the truth of her infidelity despite his forensic interrogation.

Did Arthur Morey do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?

He did quite well, subtly modulating his tones to adapt to male and female characters.

Was Ada, or Ardor worth the listening time?

Yes, it is a long novel but the narrative accelerates throughout the book.

Any additional comments?

Personally, I found it harder to appreciate Nabokov`s verbal dexterity aurally; I think one needs to see the words on the page to understand some of his puns and wordplay.

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2 people found this helpful

Just not for me

Reading other reviews I think this is a bit of a "marmite" book- love or hate it but not really any middle ground.
I fell into the latter.
I felt the book was more a showcase of literary techniques to show superiority and command of language and a continual attempt to shock than a story to be savoured and enjoyed.
I have no issues with subtle use of language but felt the switching between languages just distracted from the story - which if I'm honest I'm not really sure I could describe. I believe in text form it is a challenging read and for some that makes the best kind of book
I did make it to the bItter end -the performance was good which helped a lot but it just wasn't for me.

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2 people found this helpful

A work of wonderous and haunting beauty.

In its complex marvels of beauty, it exceeds "Lolita" even though some readers may miss the awful tendresse in the latter book. It's here too, but in a form both mature and roughly boyish, a brilliant contrast. As always, the imagery in the book is superb, they flutter around every imaginable landscape like a flock of butterflies painted in the hues of birds of paradise and luscious sensuality. I read many times the print edition long ago, and found the magic of the book undiminished in this audio version even though the narrator leaves much to be desired. True, it is not an easy book to read aloud, perhaps Jeremy Irons might have mastered it. It's not too late to give us another version.

Some readers may find the book difficult for literary or reasons of personal mores. I have nothing to say to the latter, but those in the first group might find the book easy to enjoy and appreciate if they picked up the main themes it is intended to display using sensuous and comic imagery. Obviously, it is a philosophical (sic) look at our notions of time and space. However much we may dislike it, we have no choice to perceive them subjectively; but an absolute notion of them is inherited by the religious tradition while the relative notion of them is presented as scientific, hence objective. Clearly, this is being very economical with the truth. Scientific space-time notions are not served as 'truths' to the waiting public, they are just conceptual models or tools used to explain things. Fine! But it is we who created those models, so it's bit odd to call deductions and observations based on our own creations objective. This is Nabokov's quarrel with relativity theory.

Events and imagery in the book are the stepping stones to used to sustain this argument with many a nabokovian flourish, and the whole thing is bound together by the enduring silk threads of love between Ada and Van. Never mind the hint of incest! As always, one cannot help either bursting into torrents of merriment or into softer chuckles as one reads on, and I think in spite of its seriousness of themes, it is among the funniest of books by Nabokov I've read.

Now to a few thorns on the roses; of course, it is the author's priviledge to mix in words and phrases from several languages. But Russian is bit too much, I just missed most of what is intended in that difficult tongue, and a bit I understood is what I could deduce from the context with groans. Unseemly footnotes may have helped, but they break one's reading rhythm abominably.

I recommend "Ada" very highly as a literary work that has given me unalloyed pleasure at each and every reading. Perhaps, Audible might soon offer us a better audio rendring of this marvellous book.

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Masterpiece

The book is simply a masterpiece of literature. Beautiful, breathtaking prose. Nabokov is a master of literary fiction. This book is worth reading for the gorgeous prose alone. Beware, it is not an easy read. I listened to the audiobook with the physical copy in my hands for maximum effect.

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Beautiful prose fiction

Nabokov is the master of prose, if you enjoy his books, this book is just everything great about those, but longer and somehow with even more original and detailed prose

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