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Title: if ever a novel deserved 5 stars...
Review: Let's put things straight from the start: this is a weird novel, practically a genre unto itself. It consists of a long poem ("pale fire") supposedly written by a fictional american poet (John Shade) and the subsequent notes/commentary, written by an equally fictional character: Charles Kinbote, a man who claims to be a scholar from the country (fictional again) of Zembla. Now, far from being a reliable annotator, Kinbote bends every word of the poem (hilariously so because it's far too evident) so as to mantain that Shade's autobiographical poem is in fact about the story of Zembla (and Kinbote's personal tragedy).This was intended as a satire against critics who, in Nabokov's opinion, tend to see in other people poems meanings and hints that are not really there.While the concept immediately got my attention, I feared that it might be marred by boring execution. Boy, how was I wrong... Eventually I couldn't put it down until I had finished it!
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