Mary (Paperback)

by Vladimir Nabokov (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Nabokov's first novel. A tale of youth, first love and nostalgia. In a Berlin rooming house, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future relives his first love affair.

Language Notes
Text: English, Russian (translation)

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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: 8 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #179,338 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 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)

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.

12 of 15 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)

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.

8 of 10 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

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.