Ada, or Ardor

A Family Chronicle

By: Vladimir Nabokov

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Published two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov’s seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of his greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest, but it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom. One of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

©1969 Vladimir Nabokov (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” (John Updike)

One of my favorite books, some typos in performance

Overall this was a great recording of Ada, and with such a dense text it can be very helpful and altogether fun to read along with the audiobook. Some editions of Ada include VN’s own typos, some notably corrected or amended in the Notes to Ada by Darkbloom. I can’t recommend Adaonline as a resource enough. My only criticism would be that the narrator sometimes mistakes one word in the print for another, and if you’re not reading along with the audio this can misrepresent the text’s intended form.

Extraordinary work, Extraordinary writer

I had listened to Jeremy Irons' reading of Lolita with amazement, but I was so taken with his narration that I may have underrated the writer. No longer. Ada, by Nabokov, reminds me of nothing so much as reading Proust when I was 23 - a transcendent experience. His facility with words, his play with time and place and history is flawless.

But this is not for the meek or faint of heart! It requires attention and devotion. Truly an extraordinary work.

Nabokov's most cosmopolitan novel

Cannot be fully appreciated on a first reading. Take your time with it, like you would with a painter's masterpiece.

Narrator does a good job

Any additional comments?

I typically don't write reviews but there were reviews on this novel about how the narrator was subpar and it gave me pause but i'm glad i tried it anyway. I thought Arthur Morey did an admirable job. Do not let him keep you from enjoying this novel.

A Turn at Great European Wealth

A difficult, confusing, at times boring, utterly delightful novel. Ideally one reads it many times like Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past.

Butchering Nabokov

What did you like best about Ada, or Ardor? What did you like least?

I wouldn't have thought anybody could make Nabokov's wonderful prose sound this bad: grating, irritating and affected. In his mouth, all the characters sound like conceited, shallow, spoiled, self indulgent teenagers, instead of thoughtful, lyrical, mulitdimensional people. Yes, the characters are meant to be young and self absorbed, but they shouldn't sound like valley girls (and boys) with big vocabularies, insulated from real emotional life and development by even bigger bank roles. What a disappointment ! ! !

What did you like best about this story?

But, of course, it is Nabokov, and if you can some how tune out the ugly veneer applied by the reader, the story, and the language, are still there.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Arthur Morey?

Anybody else, alone or with a cast, would be better.

Full of Lust 'n ... Genetic Combustion

Constructed with brilliance and complexity and including maybe Nabokov's most radiant, gorgeous writing, the novel runs from 1884 through 1967, covering such heady themes as the texture of time.

Unfortunately, this presented an even higher hurdle for my moral prejudices than Lolita, believe it or not. Perhaps, it's in the way the topic (incest) was approached.

In 1884, deadpan Van is 14 and precious lil' Ada is 12. They believe themselves to be first cousins, and at this tender age, Van introduces Ada to forbidden pleasures and they begin an all-consuming sexual affair, in which she is just as much an instigator as Van. The descriptor "all-consuming" is no overstatement. Ada is so obsessed she insists on introducing her younger sister to the taboo ecstacy.

Some time later Ada and Van learn that they are in fact brother and sister. It's too complex to explain the actuality of how they are siblings but did not know, except to say it's messy in itself. They are separated, by mutual consent and a promise of the son to the father, only to come back together time and again, particularly after their daddy's death.

In essence, this novel is a romance: morally verboten, erotic and fraught with danger, not the least of which is the possibility of a genetically combustible impregnation.

very annoying pronounciation

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The book is great, the audio book is not.

How could the performance have been better?

Have someone reading it who actually speaks the languages that are cited. At least he should be able to pronounce it correctly. Nabokovian books require that.

Strange procession

I was drawn in constantly by the language, but there's no climax
and still listened.

Over the Top

Arthur Morey does okay on this difficult work, and he is not responsible for the gradual turn-off that unfolds when listening to this overly complicated work. The fault lies squarely with Nabokov himself. It's difficult to understand what he was thinking when he wrote this novel. It's a wilderness of mirrors. The excessive preoccupation with the sexuality of his characters can be accepted, but the twin Earth, twin everything, theme is just too much, at least for me. Perhaps I will eventually get used to it, but it is a slow, confusing, unpleasant experience so far. Not for the faint-hearted.