I listened to this unabridged while commuting. Something was lost by imbibing “Speak, Memory,” this way. Could’ve done without an oral recital of his illustrious heritage (not unlike all the “begats” in Genesis.) Nonetheless the opening paragraph spoke keenly to my middle-aged self.

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).” ( )

Powerful recollections of different lives from other worlds - Russia and Europe and US since 1899.
Very deep and colourful prose, amazing descriptions. Sometimes sentence constructions are hard to follow and lose the prose plot. But a good read

After reading the personal experiences of a writer, normally I like the writer more than I did before. This wasn't the case with this book. My admiration for Nabokov's talent, intelligence and sense of humour increased, but I ended up annoyed with Nabokov as a person.

Born into an aristocratic and wealthy family, fifty servants, French and English governesses, Russian tutors, grand estates, limousines, Vladimir Nabokov's childhood was spent in a state of comfort at the very least. The child Vladimir was a domineering older brother, a snob, a spoilt precocious child.

Still Nabokov's prose was entrancing as always, and not just one passage per chapter but passage after passage of brilliant recollections. When tracing his ancestry to writing of his childhood, and later exile, after his world is cast away by the Bolshevik revolution. This was just an incredible book. ( )

Pretentious language, not inviting unless you have an appreciation (but why read Nabokov if you don't?). It felt like he was holding me at a distance, taking the academic view, but then he would surprise me with some vulnerable detail or self-deprecatory vignette. It's just how the man writes, even when writing about himself, and his descriptions are beautiful. Early on he reveals where his mastery of English originates: it was the first language he could read and write.

Grown accustomed to the style, it was easier to appreciate the fun stories about childhood hijinks, the uncle who gave up his ticket on the Titanic, his fascination with butterflies, his first loves, etc. There's also some insights into pre-revolutionary (and revolutionary) Russian life, although he had the sheltered perspective of a youth among the nobility and makes few political comments until the exile. There's tragedy too, the death of his father especially. He's offended by sympathize with his loss of fortune in the revolution, something he was never bothered by and doesn't want to feel otherwise about. Russia was knocked out of World War One just in time to avoid his being of age to join it, and the same with the White Army's attempt to defeat the Bolsheviks, a different kind of fortune. The exile stings him, the inability to return home and see again the land of memories.

Ostensibly this memoir covers the years from his birth in 1899 up to 1940, but the last twenty years of that period are squeezed into its final fifty pages. This covers his exile from Russia, his study at Cambridge and a breezy look at his years in Europe. He draws a veil over the romance with his wife but ends with reflections on bringing up his son. While it's not stated explicitly, Nabokov implies the full-circle that a new father experiences from having lived his childhood to reliving it through his child. It's a strong note to end on. ( )

Nabokov is a weirdo. His best characters are also oddballs: Humbert Humbert, the delusional pedophile, or Charles Kinbote the insane romantic. His novels demonstrate the immorality of living in a fictional, constructed reality. Humbert believes that he lives in a world where a relationship with a young girl is viable and ideal. Kinbote's parasitic relationship with his neighbor John Shade is based on his (imagined) kingship of an obscure European country. This personal history demonstrates the way people construct a world from their memories that may or may not bear any resemblance to reality.

Despite the fact that he lived through some of the most tumultuous events in human history, Nabokov does not react with the fervor that one would expect. Like a good novelist, he is more concerned with the minute details that percolate from his speaking memory: the seasonal changes of flora and fauna on his family estate, the peccadilloes of his nannies and tutors, his hobbies (butterflies and chess problems). His mother and father are described somewhat, but Nabokov does not seem to really be close to them - his family relations are confined to rigid, Victorian formality. He writes that his brother Sergey is "a mere shadow in the background of my richest and most detailed recollections." The tutors who somewhat incompetently guided his intellectual development are more fully fleshed out.

What makes Nabokov so brilliant is his unexpected, eccentric view of the world and how he delights in presenting this view through the playground of language. A lot of Speak, Memory is overwritten, in the sense that he often goes down the rabbit hole of description and dares his reader to come up for air. The details are precise and patchwork: following the thread of his memories presents a major challenge for the casual reader. ( )