Superbly edited by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd, these letters reveal Nabokov as a considerable wit, with a gift for terse put-downs and fascination with what remained outside his class and culture.
Letters to Véra, opens the workshop door and shows us Vladimir not in his accredited hard-shell case of genius but as a soft, vulnerable practicing writer.
With scholarly apparatus including chronology, bibliography and 186 pages of endnotes, this hefty edition shadows the young author but sheds little light on his art.
Vladimir and Véra’s full-spectrum love is one of literature’s greatest stories, and incorporating nearly every aspect of for-better-or-for-worse, this monumental volume wildly surpasses its every expectation.
The book’s herky-jerky format is handled well by the co-editors, who furnish detailed introductory comments, a useful timeline, and insightful appendices. The reader is never lost.
