Mary [Paperback]

Vladimir Nabokov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 20, 1989

Mary is a gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia--Nabokov's first novel.  In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair.  His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia.  In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin's, who, he discovers, is Mary's husband, temporarily separated from her by the Revolution but expecting her imminent arrival from Russia.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation)

From the Inside Flap

Mary is a gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia--Nabokov's first novel. In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin's, who, he discovers, is Mary's husband, temporarily separated from her by the Revolution but expecting her imminent arrival from Russia.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (November 20, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679726209
• ISBN-13: 978-0679726203
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #169,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magic, December 24, 2001

By 

Z. Liu (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mary (Paperback)

Putting my obsession for Nabokov and for first novels in general aside, reading this was still pure bliss. Sometimes narrative breaks for the author to sneak in some philosophical musing about memory, but somehow it fits. Immature writer syndrome, I suppose, which i've caught in my own work.

It is a book about first love, and losing her, and then finding her again, but engaged to another man, who's not half the man you are. Nabokov questions how much you're in love with only the memory, and whether finding the flesh and blood girl again will ever fill the hole that your memory and desire have dug.

Makes interesting reading next to Martin Amis' first work, The Rachel Papers.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Three Greatest Russian Writers Ever, March 7, 2007

By 

Becky Eckheart (Boulder, Co) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mary (Paperback)

If ever discussing Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, the conversation might inevitably turn towards Nobakov. One of the holy trinity of Russian writers, Nabokov, in "Mary", encompasses a whole array of human emotions. I don't want to give away the ending, but the impact is compounded in the final pages. Masterfully written, it keeps you turning pages to see what happens. It didn't turn out like I imagined, but I was not disappointed. Conversely, instead of being let down, my life went through a paradigm shift. Not a lot of books have done that to me, but this book is a rarity indeed.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nabokov reads like a nostalgia suffused with lightning..., October 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mary (Paperback)

First published under the title Mashenka, Mary is a lucid trip in and out of a man's fantasy. It is comic, despondent, and filled with illuminating details- the hole in a sock, the old hand that looks like a crinkled old leaf, ribbons. Each detail evokes, arouses the smell of memories. All the author has to do is insert an image into future narrative passages and this reader finds himself seemingly lost in time, remembering what the character remembers, in full color. This book hangs around for a while.