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Ada, or Ardor
- A Family Chronicle
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
Published two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov’s seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of his greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest, but it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom. One of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
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NOT UNabridged!
- By Doreen on 05-09-15
By: Joan Lindsay
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Beauty and Sadness
- By: Yasunari Kawabata
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Returning to Kyoto, where temple bells announce the New Year, a grave and penitent Oki is drawn to a haunting obsession from his past. Gently lyrical, yet fierce with the stark intensity of passion, Kawabata's last novel tells the story of the lasting consequences of a brief love affair.
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nostalgic literature from Japan
- By Emily on 10-29-10
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Beguiling the Beauty
- By: Sherry Thomas
- Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Duke of Lexington meets the mysterious Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg on a transatlantic liner, he is fascinated. She’s exactly what he’s been searching for - a beautiful woman who interests and entices him. He falls hard and fast - and soon proposes marriage. And then she disappears without a trace.… For in reality, the "baroness" is Venetia Easterbrook - a proper young widow who had her own vengeful reasons for instigating an affair with the duke. But the plan has backfired. Venetia has fallen in love with the man she despised - and there’s no telling what might happen when she is finally unmasked….
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Worth multiple listens
- By anonymous on 09-10-19
By: Sherry Thomas
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The Shifting Fog [also published under the alternate title The House at Riverton]
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks.
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Alternate title for "The House at Riverton"
- By Karen on 12-22-13
By: Kate Morton
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
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Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
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His at Night
- By: Sherry Thomas
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Lord Vere is used to baiting irresistible traps. As a secret agent for the government, he's tracked down some of the most devious criminals in London, all the while maintaining his cover as one of society's most harmless - and idiotic - bachelors. But nothing can prepare him for the scandal of being ensnared by Elissande. Forced into a marriage of convenience, Elissande and Vere are each about to discover that they're not the only ones with a hidden agenda.
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The title is SO random!!
- By 🌿🌸Susynne🌸🌿 on 05-04-15
By: Sherry Thomas
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Orlando
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Clare Higgins
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.
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Magical
- By Mayca on 05-31-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Lydia Davis - translator
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she is married to the provincial doctor Charles Bovary yet harbors dreams of an elegant and passionate life. Escaping into sentimental novels, she finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. In an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs.
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Ironic, humorous, and restrained
- By Esther on 05-13-13
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
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An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
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A dry run at big, complex themes
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Life and chess are such lonely battles
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A non-Euclidean German love triangle.
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Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically - it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. Society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers and mass-marketed psychedelic drugs.
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perfect audio experience
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Underworld
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Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.
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CYBEX burned into my eyes
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What listeners say about Ada, or Ardor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rowan Waters
- 03-31-21
One of my favorite books, some typos in performance
Overall this was a great recording of Ada, and with such a dense text it can be very helpful and altogether fun to read along with the audiobook. Some editions of Ada include VN’s own typos, some notably corrected or amended in the Notes to Ada by Darkbloom. I can’t recommend Adaonline as a resource enough. My only criticism would be that the narrator sometimes mistakes one word in the print for another, and if you’re not reading along with the audio this can misrepresent the text’s intended form.
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- Andrew
- 06-20-14
Extraordinary work, Extraordinary writer
I had listened to Jeremy Irons' reading of Lolita with amazement, but I was so taken with his narration that I may have underrated the writer. No longer. Ada, by Nabokov, reminds me of nothing so much as reading Proust when I was 23 - a transcendent experience. His facility with words, his play with time and place and history is flawless.
But this is not for the meek or faint of heart! It requires attention and devotion. Truly an extraordinary work.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Michael D Murphy
- 06-13-15
Nabokov's most cosmopolitan novel
Cannot be fully appreciated on a first reading. Take your time with it, like you would with a painter's masterpiece.
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- joe
- 08-08-14
Narrator does a good job
Any additional comments?
I typically don't write reviews but there were reviews on this novel about how the narrator was subpar and it gave me pause but i'm glad i tried it anyway. I thought Arthur Morey did an admirable job. Do not let him keep you from enjoying this novel.
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3 people found this helpful
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- David H
- 11-28-22
A Turn at Great European Wealth
A difficult, confusing, at times boring, utterly delightful novel. Ideally one reads it many times like Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past.
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- private
- 10-19-12
Butchering Nabokov
What did you like best about Ada, or Ardor? What did you like least?
I wouldn't have thought anybody could make Nabokov's wonderful prose sound this bad: grating, irritating and affected. In his mouth, all the characters sound like conceited, shallow, spoiled, self indulgent teenagers, instead of thoughtful, lyrical, mulitdimensional people. Yes, the characters are meant to be young and self absorbed, but they shouldn't sound like valley girls (and boys) with big vocabularies, insulated from real emotional life and development by even bigger bank roles. What a disappointment ! ! !
What did you like best about this story?
But, of course, it is Nabokov, and if you can some how tune out the ugly veneer applied by the reader, the story, and the language, are still there.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Arthur Morey?
Anybody else, alone or with a cast, would be better.
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12 people found this helpful
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- W Perry Hall
- 12-28-17
Full of Lust 'n ... Genetic Combustion
Constructed with brilliance and complexity and including maybe Nabokov's most radiant, gorgeous writing, the novel runs from 1884 through 1967, covering such heady themes as the texture of time.
Unfortunately, this presented an even higher hurdle for my moral prejudices than Lolita, believe it or not. Perhaps, it's in the way the topic (incest) was approached.
In 1884, deadpan Van is 14 and precious lil' Ada is 12. They believe themselves to be first cousins, and at this tender age, Van introduces Ada to forbidden pleasures and they begin an all-consuming sexual affair, in which she is just as much an instigator as Van. The descriptor "all-consuming" is no overstatement. Ada is so obsessed she insists on introducing her younger sister to the taboo ecstacy.
Some time later Ada and Van learn that they are in fact brother and sister. It's too complex to explain the actuality of how they are siblings but did not know, except to say it's messy in itself. They are separated, by mutual consent and a promise of the son to the father, only to come back together time and again, particularly after their daddy's death.
In essence, this novel is a romance: morally verboten, erotic and fraught with danger, not the least of which is the possibility of a genetically combustible impregnation.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Joe B
- 10-18-19
powerful
Wow, once again Nabokov chooses to pick disturbing topics but his writing is incredible and the narration was great.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Aidan O'Reilly
- 06-30-21
curious
I am a huge fan of Nabokov. and I have read or listened to much of his work. This book although it contains passages of brilliance that seem almost otherworldly in their elegance left me feeling a bit annoyed and unsatisfied. it is unclear to me whether the snobbery of the two main characters was satirical or unintentionally revealing. I am also unsure if this uncertainty is spawned by the book itself or by the narration (workman-like but unremarkable in either a negative or positive sense). if you ate a fan of Nabokov check this out if you haven't read or listened to his stuff before i reccomemd Pale Fire.
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- Susanne
- 06-01-16
very annoying pronounciation
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
The book is great, the audio book is not.
How could the performance have been better?
Have someone reading it who actually speaks the languages that are cited. At least he should be able to pronounce it correctly. Nabokovian books require that.
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