I’m lucky enough to own a first edition of this book (well, first edition in English), so the cover isn’t what one would normally expect, although my copy is in better shape than the copy shown. It’s intimidating trying to write about Nabokov’s work. He’s not intimidating to me as a reader, but he’s such a sneaky old bastard that every time I open my mouth about one of his books (and this is the sixteenth, that’s right, the sixteenth that I’ve read) I’m terrified that I’ve missed something strikingly obvious. It’s less likely with King, Queen, Knave, because it’s such an early book, but still. The plot, like with Mary, is absurdly simple; a young man moves to the city to start a new life with the help of his successful uncle. He and his aunt eventually fall in love and hatch a scheme to dispose of the uncle, who is actually a great guy, if somewhat eccentric. In typical Nabokov fashion the conspirators internalize their schemes and anxieties, which slowly drive them insane. But really, who reads Nabokov for the plot?
Translated by his son Dmitri and then polished by The Man Himself, the prose fairly sparkles. Nabokov is very nearly at his top powers, using the physical world and the objects in it to manipulate the reader’s impressions of the psychological states of his main characters. Martha’s dream-like death near the end, and Nabokov’s jumping from sympathy with one character’s point of view to another’s are not as skillfully handled as in his later books, but it was still and enjoyable read, and seeds of his later greatness are plainly visible. The prose of this book is still head and shoulders above most modern writers (though it is technically a translation from the Russian, since Nabokov himself always “touched up” his own translations, I feel fairly safe treating this novel as though it were written originally in English).
Next: Noise, by Russell Smith.
