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Review: Vladimir Nabokov - Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969)
This was the first book by Vladimir Nabokov that I had read, and I can definitely see why some people call it his magnum opus. There is a lot of thought put into this book.
The story itself is surprisingly straightforward. It's the language that Nabokov puts a lot of care into, and those add so much detail to the story.
There is definitely a lot that I missed while reading this book. Admittedly I'm not very patient when reading books from another time so some of the writing did fly over my head. And while I did appreciate the annotations provided by Ada Online, annotations were provided only up until part way through Part 2, and often contained spoilers. So I guess this is just a warning that my write up for this book is not going to do the book justice at all. There a lot of stuff that I definitely missed and that says more about me as a reader than this book lol.
I still think this was a fascinating book. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody because of the incest warning and because the writing is a bit dense, but I think those who like dense literature would get a lot out of this book.
Spoilers.
Story
The story is about the incestuous relationship between Van and Ada, a pair of siblings who were raised as cousins, in an alternate version of our earth. As youths, they were madly in love with each other. As adults, there were some misunderstands and angst that kept them apart, but they did remain in love. Finally, in old age, they lived together in incestuous bliss.
Not going to lie, I did come into this book expecting scandalous incest and technically, I did get it. However, Van and Ada were socialized in society as cousins, so I really thought of them much more as cousins than siblings. I acknowledge that them being siblings was probably part of why they liked each other so much, but I truly did see them more as cousins.
I think their attraction toward one another was partially due to the fact that they were siblings. I think they felt that no one could understand them like each other, since they had the same mother and father and were both extremely clever. They somewhat connected on an intellectual level, and finding out they were siblings pushed them together forever. I think they saw each other as soulmates because they were siblings. It's fascinating and twisted but logical.
As I was reading the book, I came to realize that I didn't like Van and Ada. As kids, they were madly in love with each other, and they clearly had a lot of fun having sex, but admittedly the way they treated Lucette left a really bad taste in my mouth. They teased her, and the used her. I'll talk more about Lucette in her character section below, but I feel like she was toyed with her whole life and suffered for it.
And yet, Van and Ada's romance still touched me. When Van first found out that Ada was cheating on him at the end of Part 1, I felt Van's heartbreak. I felt their desperate need to be close to one another and I can respect that.
Writing
As seen on Ada Online, this book is full of references, so much so that someone wrote their dissertation on this book. The language was also extremely flowery and hard to read, but Nabokov could fit so much description in his sentences. And so much wordplay! It was amazing.
It's nothing like I've ever read before. It's not for everyone, but I have to admire the work put into it. I will definitely be checking out more of Nabokov's writing.
Characters
Van Veen
Van was our point of view character, and an unreliable narrator. I felt that Nabokov handled Van in a very fascinating way. I didn't like Van. I thought he was slightly full of himself, and I didn't think he knew how to treat people right. And yet I sympathized with him every step of the way.
I felt that Van didn't care a lot about people. To him, everybody that didn't matter literally didn't matter. He gave them zero respect. The people who mattered to him were Ada, and probably his parents Demon, Marina, and Aqua. I felt that Van was slightly controlling of Ada, but that would have been a bigger problem if Ada didn't seem to dislike it, so I guess they fit together that way. I also wondered Van had a double standard when it came to love. I'm leaning towards no, but I guess I was just wondering what his thoughts were on infidelity. Obviously he was extremely upset when he found out Ada was cheating on him. When he'd slept with other women, they technically were not attached, though they were still deeply in love. Was it something he did just because he could? To prove a point about how much it had hurt Ada? Or maybe he was really doing it just as a pastime.
Van slept with many women in the years that he was not with Ada, which was fair, technically he was single. But he would not sleep with Lucette. Why? My guess is that Lucette was too close to Ada without actually being Ada. Maybe he saw her as a fake and that he would rather have something completely different than a counterfeit. Nonetheless, he still interacted with her due to encouragement from Ada. I also don't think Van cares about why Lucette was so clingy with him. I'll talk about this more in Lucette's section. Basically, I think Van never cared a bit about Lucette, and only interacted with her because of Ada's encouragement. And even knowing that she was madly in love with him, he didn't seem to care about it at all, not seeming to exhibit any strong emotions when Lucette died.
I was surprised by the fact that Van seemed to care for Aqua, his adopted mother. She seemed to be the only person not "directly" related to him that he cared about. Otherwise, he only cared about Ada, Marina, and Demon. He did visit her in hospital before she died. After she died, Van continued to study Terra, interviewing other mental patients about this place, writing a book on it, etc. My interpretation was that these intellectual pursuits were Van's way of showing his love for his mother after she passed. He'd never really shown passion for much else other than Ada in my opinion, and if this is correct, that is quite the declaration of love for his adopted mother in my opinion.
Van: not a guy I'd want to know in real life, but still handled extremely compellingly by Nabokov.
Ada Veen
Ada was the other half of our star-crossed lovers. I thought it was interesting how we got to know Ada through Van's very biased lens. He was clearly very in love with her, but we still saw the flaws.
Ada was just as clever as Van. I think in their early years at Ardis, it was implied that she had a large sexual appetite. Van also made sure to let us know that he thought she was so attractive when she was twelve years old. This probably isn't as creepy when you remember that he was fourteen.
I think one trait that set apart Van and Ada was that Ada seemed to have some more sympathy. Whereas Van totally ignored everybody who wasn't worth his time, I think Ada learned to see the positives with everybody she met. She saw that Lucette was always looking for attention, so she was the one who would include Lucette (though she was not nice to her either). If Ada didn't see the charms of Percy and Mr. Rack, she probably wouldn't have slept with them either. When Van confronted Ada about her affair, the impression I got was that Ada thought Percy was kind of a soft meowmeow, and she found joy in comforting him, something that she could never have with Van. Years later, Ada could not bear to divorce her husband because seeing him so ill made her emotional. It's these sorts of things that separate Van and Ada apart.
As mentioned, just because Ada noticed Lucette more didn't mean she was nice to her. Ada and Van would tease Lucette, trick her or trap her so that they could have time to themselves. Ada had also gotten Van to pet Lucette and spend time with her to make her an accomplice to their love, though it was implied that she really just wanted Lucette to distract Van so that she could go see Percy. So Ada not only noticed Lucette yearning for attention, she took advantage of that for her personal reasons. And yet, on the outside, she always talked about Lucette like they were the bestest of friends.
Lucette revealed that she and Ada had engaged in sexual behaviour. This sort of did not surprise me. Again, it just made sense that Ada would take advantage of Ada's need for attention to get pleasure for hereself. And Lucette already knew of Ada's perversions (incest) and knew that she would not tell because she loved Van so much, so she took advantage of Lucette's loyalty. In old age, Ada talked about how Van should have married Lucette so that the three of them could live blissfully at Ardis Hall. Again, Van didn't really say much because he never cared for Lucette, while Ada was only thinking of using Lucette so she and Van could have their happy ending.
The more I talk about Ada, the less I like her lol.
Lucette Veen
Lucette, poor girl. My impression of her was that she was a young girl who just wanted attention from her sister and cousin. I don't think she necessarily started out with romantic/sexual attraction to Van. Instead, my guess is that she would only see Van and Ada interacting amorously, and so she came to think that that was what she wanted from Van as well.
It was implied that Lucette remained loyal to Van her whole life. I don't think she slept with anyone, and she was willing to marry Van so that Van and Ada could have their happily ever after, as long as she could stay by Van's side.
Lucette apparently caused a ruckus in Ada's marriage and then happened to board the same ship that Van was on. She propositioned him again, and it became painfully clear that Van would rather have no one than Lucette. Lucette had a lot to drink and then committed suicide by jumping into the water.
Themes
Infidelity
My thoughts on this topic aren't fully formulated. Van had only slept with Ada after he met her, and after leaving Ardis Hall, he slept with many women and girls. As for Ada, she was sleeping with at least three people when still at Ardis Hall, but she was in long-term relationships with people in adulthood.
So who is the cheater? Technically still Ada, I guess. It's hard to say whether Van and Ada were actually in a relationship, because they never talked about it explicitly, but clearly Van thought they had something special, and it hurt when he realized that Ada didn't feel the same, that she was sharing sex with other men.
As mentioned, I wondered if Van sleeping with other people was his way of trying to forget Ada.
Terra
I actually found out about this book because I was looking up books with alternate histories. That being said, I didn't pay too much attention to Antiterra in this books, because it didn't actually seem to be as big of a theme. As mentioned, the delusions were an intellectual interest of Van's, the other thing he had a lot of passion for, possibly because they were the last remnants of his adopted mother. He even wrote a book about Terra, though it didn't sell well at first. It was later made into a movie which earned him a lot of money though.
In Antiterra, the biggest difference was that Russia had a much larger worldwide influence. Van, Ada, and their family members constantly spoke in a mix of English, Russian, and French. Not coincidentally, Nabokov also spoke those three languages, and I wonder if he'd written the Veens to be this way so that he could use lots of word play, or because he wanted their upbringing to reflect his own childhood.
Incest and other taboos
As expected, Nabokov handled the scandalous immoral topics in a surprisingly sentimental way. As mentioned, I did perceive them more as cousins than siblings because of how they were perceived in public, but I did think that between the two of them, being siblings was a big part in why they felt so connected. Nonetheless, both would probably be considered incest (maternal cousin marriage is not considered incest in some cultures but because their "fathers" are paternal cousins and they share the same surname, then they would be considered descended from the same patrilineal line. Plus, I believe their Marina & Aqua and Demon & Dan are cousins as well).
Nevertheless, while reading this book, I felt that I was simply just reading about two people in love, who were meant for each other, but also could not be together. It was frankly quite amazing how Nabokov was able to evoke this feeling for these two characters, even though I didn't like them.
I also recall pedophilia and pederasty being brought up many times during this book. Some consider it a callback to Lolita, but I wonder if it's just Nabokov's style to include these topics because they just made sense in the context of the story.
Aqua and Lucette
There were several parallels to Aqua and Lucette. They were both the unwanted sisters, who had delusions, and ultimately committed suicide.
Demon had been sleeping with Marina all along. It was only because they'd had an argument that he'd had a shotgun marriage with Aqua and had a baby with her. And when her baby had died in childbirth, Marina had given up her firstborn Van to replace Aqua's baby. And afterwards, Marina and Demon continued their affair, which later produced Ada. As for Lucette, Van never had his eye on her. He always saw her as a nuisance.
Aqua had delusions about Terra. Surprisingly, Van did not mock her for them. Maybe it was because he saw her as a test subject to be studied, but as mentioned above, I did lean towards seeing it as more sentimental feelings from him towards his adoptive mother. As for Lucette, I'd say that her delusions were about constantly trying to get with Van. I forgot what the exact quote was, but the book basically implied that she acted very promiscuously but was actually a virgin. She would do anything to sleep with Van, even if it meant looking like she slept around a lot, but that never worked, maybe partially because she was too desperate, and partially because Van never cared.
And as we know, both ladies committed suicide :(
Overall
Very interesting book. I've never read anything like it. As you can see, I really didn't like Van and Ada, and yet I was so invested in them being together. I've heard people say that Nabokov romanticized Humbert's love for Lolita in Lolita, but that's because the book was written from Humbert's point of view. I think something similar happened here. I saw Van and Ada's love as something epic and grand, because it was, for them. And I'm glad I got to read something like this to broaden my perspectives and challenge my views. I wish I had the time to study this book in a class or with a study group, because it is so dense with references, but Ada Online will do for now. Anyway, very fascinating book!
The story itself is surprisingly straightforward. It's the language that Nabokov puts a lot of care into, and those add so much detail to the story.
There is definitely a lot that I missed while reading this book. Admittedly I'm not very patient when reading books from another time so some of the writing did fly over my head. And while I did appreciate the annotations provided by Ada Online, annotations were provided only up until part way through Part 2, and often contained spoilers. So I guess this is just a warning that my write up for this book is not going to do the book justice at all. There a lot of stuff that I definitely missed and that says more about me as a reader than this book lol.
I still think this was a fascinating book. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody because of the incest warning and because the writing is a bit dense, but I think those who like dense literature would get a lot out of this book.
Spoilers.
Story
The story is about the incestuous relationship between Van and Ada, a pair of siblings who were raised as cousins, in an alternate version of our earth. As youths, they were madly in love with each other. As adults, there were some misunderstands and angst that kept them apart, but they did remain in love. Finally, in old age, they lived together in incestuous bliss.
Not going to lie, I did come into this book expecting scandalous incest and technically, I did get it. However, Van and Ada were socialized in society as cousins, so I really thought of them much more as cousins than siblings. I acknowledge that them being siblings was probably part of why they liked each other so much, but I truly did see them more as cousins.
I think their attraction toward one another was partially due to the fact that they were siblings. I think they felt that no one could understand them like each other, since they had the same mother and father and were both extremely clever. They somewhat connected on an intellectual level, and finding out they were siblings pushed them together forever. I think they saw each other as soulmates because they were siblings. It's fascinating and twisted but logical.
As I was reading the book, I came to realize that I didn't like Van and Ada. As kids, they were madly in love with each other, and they clearly had a lot of fun having sex, but admittedly the way they treated Lucette left a really bad taste in my mouth. They teased her, and the used her. I'll talk more about Lucette in her character section below, but I feel like she was toyed with her whole life and suffered for it.
And yet, Van and Ada's romance still touched me. When Van first found out that Ada was cheating on him at the end of Part 1, I felt Van's heartbreak. I felt their desperate need to be close to one another and I can respect that.
Writing
As seen on Ada Online, this book is full of references, so much so that someone wrote their dissertation on this book. The language was also extremely flowery and hard to read, but Nabokov could fit so much description in his sentences. And so much wordplay! It was amazing.
It's nothing like I've ever read before. It's not for everyone, but I have to admire the work put into it. I will definitely be checking out more of Nabokov's writing.
Characters
Van Veen
Van was our point of view character, and an unreliable narrator. I felt that Nabokov handled Van in a very fascinating way. I didn't like Van. I thought he was slightly full of himself, and I didn't think he knew how to treat people right. And yet I sympathized with him every step of the way.
I felt that Van didn't care a lot about people. To him, everybody that didn't matter literally didn't matter. He gave them zero respect. The people who mattered to him were Ada, and probably his parents Demon, Marina, and Aqua. I felt that Van was slightly controlling of Ada, but that would have been a bigger problem if Ada didn't seem to dislike it, so I guess they fit together that way. I also wondered Van had a double standard when it came to love. I'm leaning towards no, but I guess I was just wondering what his thoughts were on infidelity. Obviously he was extremely upset when he found out Ada was cheating on him. When he'd slept with other women, they technically were not attached, though they were still deeply in love. Was it something he did just because he could? To prove a point about how much it had hurt Ada? Or maybe he was really doing it just as a pastime.
Van slept with many women in the years that he was not with Ada, which was fair, technically he was single. But he would not sleep with Lucette. Why? My guess is that Lucette was too close to Ada without actually being Ada. Maybe he saw her as a fake and that he would rather have something completely different than a counterfeit. Nonetheless, he still interacted with her due to encouragement from Ada. I also don't think Van cares about why Lucette was so clingy with him. I'll talk about this more in Lucette's section. Basically, I think Van never cared a bit about Lucette, and only interacted with her because of Ada's encouragement. And even knowing that she was madly in love with him, he didn't seem to care about it at all, not seeming to exhibit any strong emotions when Lucette died.
I was surprised by the fact that Van seemed to care for Aqua, his adopted mother. She seemed to be the only person not "directly" related to him that he cared about. Otherwise, he only cared about Ada, Marina, and Demon. He did visit her in hospital before she died. After she died, Van continued to study Terra, interviewing other mental patients about this place, writing a book on it, etc. My interpretation was that these intellectual pursuits were Van's way of showing his love for his mother after she passed. He'd never really shown passion for much else other than Ada in my opinion, and if this is correct, that is quite the declaration of love for his adopted mother in my opinion.
Van: not a guy I'd want to know in real life, but still handled extremely compellingly by Nabokov.
Ada Veen
Ada was the other half of our star-crossed lovers. I thought it was interesting how we got to know Ada through Van's very biased lens. He was clearly very in love with her, but we still saw the flaws.
Ada was just as clever as Van. I think in their early years at Ardis, it was implied that she had a large sexual appetite. Van also made sure to let us know that he thought she was so attractive when she was twelve years old. This probably isn't as creepy when you remember that he was fourteen.
I think one trait that set apart Van and Ada was that Ada seemed to have some more sympathy. Whereas Van totally ignored everybody who wasn't worth his time, I think Ada learned to see the positives with everybody she met. She saw that Lucette was always looking for attention, so she was the one who would include Lucette (though she was not nice to her either). If Ada didn't see the charms of Percy and Mr. Rack, she probably wouldn't have slept with them either. When Van confronted Ada about her affair, the impression I got was that Ada thought Percy was kind of a soft meowmeow, and she found joy in comforting him, something that she could never have with Van. Years later, Ada could not bear to divorce her husband because seeing him so ill made her emotional. It's these sorts of things that separate Van and Ada apart.
As mentioned, just because Ada noticed Lucette more didn't mean she was nice to her. Ada and Van would tease Lucette, trick her or trap her so that they could have time to themselves. Ada had also gotten Van to pet Lucette and spend time with her to make her an accomplice to their love, though it was implied that she really just wanted Lucette to distract Van so that she could go see Percy. So Ada not only noticed Lucette yearning for attention, she took advantage of that for her personal reasons. And yet, on the outside, she always talked about Lucette like they were the bestest of friends.
Lucette revealed that she and Ada had engaged in sexual behaviour. This sort of did not surprise me. Again, it just made sense that Ada would take advantage of Ada's need for attention to get pleasure for hereself. And Lucette already knew of Ada's perversions (incest) and knew that she would not tell because she loved Van so much, so she took advantage of Lucette's loyalty. In old age, Ada talked about how Van should have married Lucette so that the three of them could live blissfully at Ardis Hall. Again, Van didn't really say much because he never cared for Lucette, while Ada was only thinking of using Lucette so she and Van could have their happy ending.
The more I talk about Ada, the less I like her lol.
Lucette Veen
Lucette, poor girl. My impression of her was that she was a young girl who just wanted attention from her sister and cousin. I don't think she necessarily started out with romantic/sexual attraction to Van. Instead, my guess is that she would only see Van and Ada interacting amorously, and so she came to think that that was what she wanted from Van as well.
It was implied that Lucette remained loyal to Van her whole life. I don't think she slept with anyone, and she was willing to marry Van so that Van and Ada could have their happily ever after, as long as she could stay by Van's side.
Lucette apparently caused a ruckus in Ada's marriage and then happened to board the same ship that Van was on. She propositioned him again, and it became painfully clear that Van would rather have no one than Lucette. Lucette had a lot to drink and then committed suicide by jumping into the water.
Themes
Infidelity
My thoughts on this topic aren't fully formulated. Van had only slept with Ada after he met her, and after leaving Ardis Hall, he slept with many women and girls. As for Ada, she was sleeping with at least three people when still at Ardis Hall, but she was in long-term relationships with people in adulthood.
So who is the cheater? Technically still Ada, I guess. It's hard to say whether Van and Ada were actually in a relationship, because they never talked about it explicitly, but clearly Van thought they had something special, and it hurt when he realized that Ada didn't feel the same, that she was sharing sex with other men.
As mentioned, I wondered if Van sleeping with other people was his way of trying to forget Ada.
Terra
I actually found out about this book because I was looking up books with alternate histories. That being said, I didn't pay too much attention to Antiterra in this books, because it didn't actually seem to be as big of a theme. As mentioned, the delusions were an intellectual interest of Van's, the other thing he had a lot of passion for, possibly because they were the last remnants of his adopted mother. He even wrote a book about Terra, though it didn't sell well at first. It was later made into a movie which earned him a lot of money though.
In Antiterra, the biggest difference was that Russia had a much larger worldwide influence. Van, Ada, and their family members constantly spoke in a mix of English, Russian, and French. Not coincidentally, Nabokov also spoke those three languages, and I wonder if he'd written the Veens to be this way so that he could use lots of word play, or because he wanted their upbringing to reflect his own childhood.
Incest and other taboos
As expected, Nabokov handled the scandalous immoral topics in a surprisingly sentimental way. As mentioned, I did perceive them more as cousins than siblings because of how they were perceived in public, but I did think that between the two of them, being siblings was a big part in why they felt so connected. Nonetheless, both would probably be considered incest (maternal cousin marriage is not considered incest in some cultures but because their "fathers" are paternal cousins and they share the same surname, then they would be considered descended from the same patrilineal line. Plus, I believe their Marina & Aqua and Demon & Dan are cousins as well).
Nevertheless, while reading this book, I felt that I was simply just reading about two people in love, who were meant for each other, but also could not be together. It was frankly quite amazing how Nabokov was able to evoke this feeling for these two characters, even though I didn't like them.
I also recall pedophilia and pederasty being brought up many times during this book. Some consider it a callback to Lolita, but I wonder if it's just Nabokov's style to include these topics because they just made sense in the context of the story.
Aqua and Lucette
There were several parallels to Aqua and Lucette. They were both the unwanted sisters, who had delusions, and ultimately committed suicide.
Demon had been sleeping with Marina all along. It was only because they'd had an argument that he'd had a shotgun marriage with Aqua and had a baby with her. And when her baby had died in childbirth, Marina had given up her firstborn Van to replace Aqua's baby. And afterwards, Marina and Demon continued their affair, which later produced Ada. As for Lucette, Van never had his eye on her. He always saw her as a nuisance.
Aqua had delusions about Terra. Surprisingly, Van did not mock her for them. Maybe it was because he saw her as a test subject to be studied, but as mentioned above, I did lean towards seeing it as more sentimental feelings from him towards his adoptive mother. As for Lucette, I'd say that her delusions were about constantly trying to get with Van. I forgot what the exact quote was, but the book basically implied that she acted very promiscuously but was actually a virgin. She would do anything to sleep with Van, even if it meant looking like she slept around a lot, but that never worked, maybe partially because she was too desperate, and partially because Van never cared.
And as we know, both ladies committed suicide :(
Overall
Very interesting book. I've never read anything like it. As you can see, I really didn't like Van and Ada, and yet I was so invested in them being together. I've heard people say that Nabokov romanticized Humbert's love for Lolita in Lolita, but that's because the book was written from Humbert's point of view. I think something similar happened here. I saw Van and Ada's love as something epic and grand, because it was, for them. And I'm glad I got to read something like this to broaden my perspectives and challenge my views. I wish I had the time to study this book in a class or with a study group, because it is so dense with references, but Ada Online will do for now. Anyway, very fascinating book!