The story was about a family which was seemingly normal on the outside, but whose members were all, at heart, lonely, stressed, or discontent with the people around them in some way. I liked the author’s depiction of everyday people’s secret inner problems and discontentment, and the metaphors she uses to describe emotions. Her interest in psychology reminds me of Dostoyevsky, but she’s more poetic, as well as practical — she seems to express that one doesn’t need mental breakdowns and tumultuous life events to be unhappy in life; the people you see every day, the things you read in the papers, and the things expected from you by society may be enough to make life weary, uncomfortable, and colorless. Because that is the “theme”, there isn’t a strong sense of plot in the book, it mainly describes its characters’ lives.

Although I liked what Woolfe was trying to convey, I found her writing style very difficult to read. Her sentences are winding and she’s merciless with commas; reading the novel was a sluggish process. Maybe I’m just not used to Victorian locution, but I couldn’t finish the book :(

Also, Elilenti’s review of this book has a very good analysis!

To be frank, I don’t think this deserves the acclaim it gets compared to his other works, like The Idiot — its themes are more simple and layerless than usual for Dostoyevsky, but I guess it’s more accessible, and besides, it’s still an excellent novel when compared to all literature. As usual for Dostoyevsky, his characters’ minds are very complex; I found it very interesting to see the way he cycled through pride, spite, looking for escapism, and mental breakdowns while taunting people for being unaware he got away with a crime, and underneath it all, yearning for compassion.

There are some passages that I still remember about this book after reading it over a year ago; most notably, “suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart.” It sounds pretty edgy, but it’s completely true. As a pianist (and therefore an artist), I try my best to constantly seek new thoughts and sensations — even painful or dangerous ones — in order to deepen my art, which is my life. And in general, the quote provides a good way to find meaning in life’s endless struggles.

The book is about a Russian émigré who teaches his language in an American college, and who has a lot of trouble assimilating into American culture. Gogol once said that “the longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes,” which I think fits this book perfectly. It alternates between humor and gloom, between Pnin’s awkwardness and his deep loneliness. Between poking fun at his confusion and abysmal English, and revealing his terrible memories of fleeing Russia because of the Revolution. Nabokov seems to have written it to make light of his own struggles to fit in when he first moved to the U.S.

Although it isn’t necessary to understand the book, I’d recommend the book to other people who speak Russian — Nabokov was very interested in languages and loved playing around with them, and it’s often that characters speak Russian, or English with very Russian mistakes, which I personally found very interesting to watch, and very relatable. He also used some French and German, but not as much.