The New Yorker: Fiction cover image

Jonas Hassen Khemiri Reads Vladimir Nabokov

The New Yorker: Fiction

CHAPTER

The Importance of Agency in Pavel's Life

I remember thinking the first time I first read through he's going to give us a Hollywood ending actually because there are a number of times when it feels like we know that she will not be happy in Pavel's apartment. She seems intellectually far superior to him yeah and that may be part of his lack of attraction to herYeah but my reading of this is that she's much more powerful than that. We start rooting for her despite the fact that she's kind of very rarely gives us a glimpse of who she really is.

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