Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire
An odd book by the author of Lolita which I should read again. Starts with a foreword setting the scene. Our narrator is an academic who comes from a north European fictional country who settles in the US at a college. He befriends a poet who he adores and having finished an epic poem he is then killed and the narrator publishes the poet's work with notes. Next is the 999 line poem. I'm not a lover of verse but this is readable veering from anecdotes, musings on things and a lot about the death of his daughter and further musings on death itself and the afterlife, or not. The bulk of the book is the narrator's notes on the poem but this is where the book's story line comes out interweaving a few different stories of which I won't give any spoilers. Suffice the say that the narrator's view of his relationship with the poet is obviously out of kilter with a strange ending leaving me wondering as to what actually happens throughout the book and how much is fiction (as in unreal within this piece of fictions reality, if you see what I mean). I must go google the book to see if my assumptions are similar to the critics. Great book though. Only downside is having to skip back and forth between poem, narrator's notes / story and the glossary / index (which to be honest I couldn't be bothered with most of the time) which standing on a tube ain't easy and results in bookmarks dropping like snowflakes on a winter's day. There's poetic imagery for you!
P.S. Having Googled interpretations of the plot it seems that my view of it (ask me before I forget it completely) may well be true as it seems there are differing schools of thought and indeed a lot more writings giving possible interpretations than contained in the book. Even seems that the author (the real one, Nabokov) isn't certain about what he wrote. All adds to the fun of reading ambiguous stories.
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