Mary by Vladimir Nabokov

After spending last week immersed in Wall Street’s 1929 crash, I’m now rewinding three years and shifting continents to meet a group of Russian émigrés in Berlin.

One of my literary through lines this year is to explore books written or set in 1926. I started with The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, followed by Jazz by Toni Morrison. My latest pick is Mary, Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel. It’s a beautifully written and poignant book about a young man consumed with memories of his first love as he wanders through life in exile following the Russian Revolution.

Before this, the only Nabokov book I'd read was Lolita, a novel I didn't particularly like. But Mary has changed my perception of Nabokov altogether, and I'm now eager to explore more of his work. He was quite prolific, so there's plenty to choose from.

Mary tells the story of Lev Glebovich Ganin, who lives in a shabby Berlin boarding house along with an eccentric group of other displaced Russians. When Lev discovers that his overbearing neighbor is the husband of Mary, the girl he loved intensely when they were teenagers in St. Petersburg, he becomes obsessed with the idea of trying to win her back. His reminiscences soon begin to take over his every waking moment. As Nabokov writes, Lev became "so absorbed with his memories, that he was unaware of time."

The story is suffused with Lev’s longing – not just for Mary, but also for a Russia that no longer exists. Lev can never go back to his homeland, and like the other residents of the boarding house, he sleepwalks through Berlin, working menial jobs and dreaming of the past. Recollecting his love for Mary gives Lev a sense of purpose, a task he takes on with great care.

"Afraid of making a mistake, of losing his way in the bright labyrinth of memory, he re-created his past life watchfully, fondly, occasionally turning back for some forgotten piece of trivia, but never running ahead too fast," Nabokov writes.

Mary, written in 1926, was Vladimir Nabokov's first novel.

While the book is not a memoir, Lev has many similarities with Nabokov. Both were born in St. Petersburg in 1899, fled after the Revolution, and settled in Berlin in the early 1920s.

Nabokov is a dazzling writer who revels in wordplay and exuberant language. My edition of the book features a great John Updike quote on the back: "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." He can also be very funny. I laughed out loud at several scenes, including when Lev breaks up with his girlfriend, Lyudmila, after learning that Mary is on her way to Berlin. He has already tired of Lyudmila – her talking during movies is the final straw – but she is furious when he ends things. She sends a message through her friend Klara that "I'm not one of those women that men can just drop. I'm the one who does the dropping."

The most compelling aspect of the novel is Nabokov's theme of how memory can be distorted based on what people want to believe. Looking back, Lev idealizes Mary as his long-lost soulmate "whom he loved forever," yet it's clear that their relationship, like many youthful romances, had actually fizzled out. Lev lost interest in Mary at times during their romance, and their final meeting in Russia is a sad and awkward encounter. But this is not how Lev chooses to remember things years later. Admitting that their relationship was unremarkable would be even more painful than accepting that it cannot be rekindled.

The conclusion of the novel feels both inevitable and yet also surprising in how Lev begins to realize that the past is not somewhere you can return to. It reminded me of that sensation when you wake up suddenly after a vivid dream. You might wish to step back into it, but it's impossible – the moment is gone forever.