The Original of Laura, (Paperback)

from MariaAlhambra

Not a 'novel in fragments' as Dmitri's cheeky subtitle suggests, but merely fragments of a novel/novella Nabokov started before his death. It is an extremely interesting book as a glimpse of Nabokov at work . The surviving fragments sketch the story of Flora, a promiscuous woman immortalised in a...

from jcbrunner

After all the brouhaha about the publication appears this obese mouse. I welcome the choice of printing detachable facsimiles of Nabokov's index cards. For the sake of legibility, they should have arranged them differently putting more than one paragraph on one page. Having to turn a page after e...

from JimElkins

Reviews of this book were repetitively concerned with three things: whether Dmiti Nabokov should have published it, against his father's wishes (I can't see the interest of this question), and what effect it will have on Nabokov's reputation (it will do "severe damage," according to Jonathan Bate...

from Meredy

Dmitri should have just let it go. Seeing the capacious and exquisitely subtle mind of Nabokov itself reduced to unintelligible fragments was more than painful. It felt like an intrusion into a disordered mind stripped of its former magnificence, as if we might peer into Leonardo's closet and see...

from Kryseis

This really would make a lovely coffee table book. It has photographs of the index cards on which Nabokov wrote the original manuscript. Contrary to the atmosphere suggested by the published review (from Slate), this book certainly does not have "the musty air of an estate sale". There aren't a...