hello123hello1234's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
rancuceanu's review against another edition
3.0
It is very likely that in rating this books I am biased (by the prestige of the author), as otherwise I was highly tempted to rate it to only 2 stars (consider it as rounded up from 2.5). As others mentioned it in better words than me, a good novel cannot consist only in beautiful sentences, alliterations or word plays.
forever_amber's review against another edition
4.0
Сюжета бих нарекла без кулминация, но описателното насищане е страхотно. Маниерът на писане е много изтънчен и красив, що се отнася до богатството на изображението.
jeremyhornik's review against another edition
3.0
The language is glorious. But I have no idea what to make of this book. I feel like I just read a long series of private jokes. It took a long time to read because the language is so rig, I couldn't go more than a few pages without feeling stuffed.
Great writer, but this one missed me.
Great writer, but this one missed me.
augenstern's review against another edition
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
graywacke's review against another edition
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This was a tough read. It seemed clear until I realized I was getting lost. And most of it is a narrator talking crazy, which gets tiresome. There is complexity and it calms down in the last 100 pages. But, i was happy to be done.
darwin8u's review
4.0
“We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally are in order to sample the rarest and ripest fruit of art which human thought has to offer.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!
How ironic, that I write a five paragraph review of 'Look at the Harlequins!' and with a careless sideways swipe of my too smooth mouse lose it all. Now I have to climb out of a self-made despair and mentally turn around and try and recreate the review I JUST wrote. There might be similarities to my real/original review, but any thing I say, any words I write will just be shadows and mouches volantes of my first try.
Nabokov's false memoir is loose, brazen and genius all at the same time. It is a false 'Speak, Memory', a greedy parody and doppelgängers of his own past. Vladimir, through Vadim, shows us how impossible it is to stop, turn around and recreate, or recapture the past. Even setting the past down on paper is no good. It is all fleeting whispers and harlequins.
Reading this novel, I was taken suddenly with the thought (almost certainly not original) that Nabokov's obsession with doubles, refractions, twins and doppelgängers comes from the split with him. There exists with Nabokov the Russian гений (Despair, the Gift, King, Queen, Knave) and the English genius (Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada). That ability to exist at such a high level in two different literary worlds is beyond simply amazing. Nabokov wasn't just dancing on a spinning chessboard. He was all the chessmen on both the black and the white side of the board.
― Vladimir Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!
How ironic, that I write a five paragraph review of 'Look at the Harlequins!' and with a careless sideways swipe of my too smooth mouse lose it all. Now I have to climb out of a self-made despair and mentally turn around and try and recreate the review I JUST wrote. There might be similarities to my real/original review, but any thing I say, any words I write will just be shadows and mouches volantes of my first try.
Nabokov's false memoir is loose, brazen and genius all at the same time. It is a false 'Speak, Memory', a greedy parody and doppelgängers of his own past. Vladimir, through Vadim, shows us how impossible it is to stop, turn around and recreate, or recapture the past. Even setting the past down on paper is no good. It is all fleeting whispers and harlequins.
Reading this novel, I was taken suddenly with the thought (almost certainly not original) that Nabokov's obsession with doubles, refractions, twins and doppelgängers comes from the split with him. There exists with Nabokov the Russian гений (Despair, the Gift, King, Queen, Knave) and the English genius (Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada). That ability to exist at such a high level in two different literary worlds is beyond simply amazing. Nabokov wasn't just dancing on a spinning chessboard. He was all the chessmen on both the black and the white side of the board.