Review from a Transgressive Fiction Fan
Pale Fire is ostentatious, high octane genius, almost as if Nabokov were trying to squeeze a complete showcase of his novelistic virtuosity in just over 200 pages of text (an epic poem within a story within a larger story, all of which may very well be the complete fabrication of the annotator/narrator, who is quite convincingly insane). Among other things, this is a portrait of insanity and perversity on par with Lolita, but with more literary/metaliterary pyrotechnics.
“Insightful” Review from a Mainstream Reader
I really hated this book. I don’t know what the point was. 200 pages of delusional writing