Rate this book

The Original Of Laura (2009)

by Vladimir Nabokov(Favorite Author)

3.34 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0307271897 (ISBN13: 9780307271891)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Knopf

review 1: I'm not sure how to rate this book, as it's not really a complete story. I enjoyed it for the glimpse of Nabokov's process– who would have guessed he wrote drafts on index cards? I'd like to try that now. His voice comes through on those cards very clearly, but the story is fragmented doesn't say anything coherent yet. Based on the story alone, the book would probably get 0 stars, but that wasn't the point of this book and not the reason I read it.
review 2: The Original of Laura is the book Vladimir Nabokov was working on when he died. It is only a series of index cards, some with prose and some with just notes, which have been dutifully arranged by his son. This book is not like Schubert's eighth, which has enough complete pieces to enjoy on their own, or... more Mozart's Requiem, which was complete enough to be somewhat ably finished by another. The Original of Laura is fragmentary, incomplete, and therefore, very frustrating. You get a basic sense of the story though with no clue where it will head. The text jumps between first and third person, and few of the characters end up very fleshed out. While this sounds like I'm mostly complaining, it's primarily just sadness that I don't get to read the finished version of what was undoubtedly going to be another masterpiece. Even so, it is fascinating to see what a book looks like frozen forever in this embryonic stage of its development, a stage one never gets to see once a book is finished. I can't give this book a rating for obvious reasons. less

Download links for: The Original of Laura

Advertising