Pale Fire - Vladimir Nakobov

Before I start, I'm going to admit it: reviewing Pale Fire makes me feel like a fool. What do my prettied words mean when the whole book was against prettied words?

Rating: six stars

I. Pale Fire: a poem

I'm not a huge fan of poetry, but after this I might have to get into it. Pale Fire (poem, not book) was beautiful, and I bristled when, on going back to the introduction (which was blissfully unaware of the evident irony), called Pale Fire "a slightly unfortunate interruption". Well, I felt the introduction was "a slightly unfortunate interruption", so I stopped reading right there (it was boring, anyway).

The poem was beautiful: full of sad, sweet humour, and a confessional piece about the events leading up to his daughter's suicide ("she always nursed a small mad hope"-wonderful phrasing; the poem is full of this sort of turn of phrase). This canto, canto two, feels the most fulfilled out of all

Pale Fire was indeed "engazhay and compelling", and I wish Nakobov wrote more poetry.

Rating: six stars

II. Pale Fire: the notes

The thing about Charles Kinbote's section of Pale Fire (book, not poem) is, for the most part, it's too accurate with its facsimile of review guides:

   "Shakespeare uses this scene to give us breathing space; further, it acts as a commentary on all that        has happened."

and

   "Lines 181-182: waxwings...cicadas

    The bird of lines 1-4 and 131 is again with us. It will reappear in the ultimate line of the poem; and     another cicada, leaving its envelope behind, will sing triumphantly at lines 236-244."

are virtually indistinguishable. Apart from that, I adored Kinbote's notes. I loved the story of a friendship, political intrigue and a revolution, and how it tied together. I found the enigmatic lines at the end with talk of

."a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king," and "another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king"

make me see the book in a whole new light. It was great.

Rating: five and a half stars