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Rating: 
Summary: Delicious detail that left me limp
Review: Wonderful writing, meandering plot, and characters who were hollow at the core. In fact, they were almost caricatures: the cold, scheming wife, the callow, easily-manipulated youth, and the jolly, blustering, unseeing husband. I won't give away the ending, but my basic reaction was "so what?" I struggled to finish this, since I had absolutely no interest in what happened to any of them. However, the journey is the destination, so to speak, and perhaps I should have paid more heed to the first chapter; it takes place on a train--a message to the reader? The sights, smells, and sensations of this novel were entrancing. In the end, however, I was no more moved than if I had observed the action of this novel through a train window.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Lolita, by any means, but still a good read
Review: Franz has come to Berlin for a job. His mother's wealthy cousin (Dreyer) has kindly agreed to take him on in his department store. What neither Dreyer nor Franz has considered is that Mrs. Martha Dreyer would also kindly consent to take him on as her lover. It takes a little planning on her part, but finally the shy, lanky Franz becomes her secret lover, her ticket to a world without Dreyer. King, Queen, Knave is a typical triangle love story. And yet, it's not. Nabokov, even in this early novel, has an excellent feel for human beings, what makes them do what they do and just how much they can stand. Franz and Martha's relationship moves from the sublime to the detestable for Franz, while he becomes a lifeline to Martha. Dreyer, seeing good in all the world, is easily duped--though easily duping Martha on the side. As with Lolita, the plot is not all that great, and I can't truly say I "enjoyed" the book. But nonetheless, I couldn't stop reading it. I had to continue watching the dynamics change between the King, the Queen and the Knave and see just how the hand was played out.
Rating:
Summary: Not Lolita, by any means, but still a good read
Review: Franz has come to Berlin for a job. His mother's wealthy cousin (Dreyer) has kindly agreed to take him on in his department store. What neither Dreyer nor Franz has considered is that Mrs. Martha Dreyer would also kindly consent to take him on as her lover. It takes a little planning on her part, but finally the shy, lanky Franz becomes her secret lover, her ticket to a world without Dreyer. King, Queen, Knave is a typical triangle love story. And yet, it's not. Nabokov, even in this early novel, has an excellent feel for human beings, what makes them do what they do and just how much they can stand. Franz and Martha's relationship moves from the sublime to the detestable for Franz, while he becomes a lifeline to Martha. Dreyer, seeing good in all the world, is easily duped--though easily duping Martha on the side. As with Lolita, the plot is not all that great, and I can't truly say I "enjoyed" the book. But nonetheless, I couldn't stop reading it. I had to continue watching the dynamics change between the King, the Queen and the Knave and see just how the hand was played out.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth reading, and even re-reading
Review: I have read Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Effi Briest... and so it was with certain trepidation that I approached yet another novel dealing with the theme of adultery. But the twists and turns (and breathtaking close calls) in "King, Queen, Knave", along with the brilliant characterization of Martha Dreyer make this book unique and well worth looking into. An excellent story. I was most impressed with the way Nabokov layed bare the tattered edges of Franz's conscience in the latter third of the story. The only reason I did not give this book a perfect rating is because the very ending left me a bit bewildered. (Maybe the author intended this)? All in all, to think that Nabokov published this book when he was but 28 years old leaves me with only one word to describe his talent: GENIUS! Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Nabokov's Second
Review: Nabokov's second novel, his brightest and lightest of the lot, is regarded by some as being one of the weaker links in the author's ouvre.
The plot here is pretty banal (a bland, country boy Franz falls in love with the wife of his rich uncle who lives in Berlin and before you know it Franz and his aunt are pathetically planning the murder of the middle-man). Nabokov pokes some fun at the story of Madame Bovary and offers somewhat of a parody.
As usual though, the plot here takes backstage to the form and style of writing and Nabokov does not disappoint; the prose is beautiful and enchanting (minus some laughable sexual innuendos and so on) and makes the novel worth reading.
While I do not think that this counts among Nabokov's strongest works, I still enjoyed it and certain images from the book have and will remain with me (especially the last couple of chapters, filled with the imagery of azure beaches and wide open skies). Nabokov does make an 'appearance' in the novel (a la Hitchcock), along with his wife, as the couple with whom Franz becomes somewhat obsessed at the seaside resort (look for mention of the butterfly net).
This is a relatively light and accessible Nabokov read, recommended for shiny summer days.
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Summary: Nabakov?s Psychological Chess Game
Review: This is an entertaining novel about a love triangle. The only twist about the story is the end which turns out to be surprising and satisfying, but what makes this novel exceptional is Nabakov's beautiful prose style and capability for penetrating the depths of the character's thoughts with intense lyrical innovations. I don't think you are meant to like any of the characters, but consider them to be hard toys with which Nabakov can play his devilish word games.
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Summary: Glorious Little Romp
Review: This is one glorious little romp of a novel. I personally don't agree that EVERY character in this book is dispicable, I thought Dreyer was perfectly tragic in his eventual realisation, but even so, I don't find the unsympathetic nature to be a fault. The physical world of King Queen Knave is something that pervades the existence of all the characters even to the most grotesque degree (see Franz's chronic disgust), but even though it may seperate their subjective experience to the extent that everybody refuses to understand anybody elses' position, Nabokov fights the deterministic cycle of the Naturalist novel and shows how these walls of relativism can be broken down, and further, that is is even NECESSARY that they be broken down. But more than that, Nabokov twists the arm of fate in his dark conclusion; he delights in showing the authour's mark behind the facade; and there's the expected round of lovely descriptive passages. One shouldn't take Nabokov's "this is by far my gayest novel" too seriously though; this is a farcical romp, but it is one darkly treacherous romp. The reader thanks God that the world around these three main players isn't caught up in the same downward spiral. That creaky boat ride upon the Lindy, the oars fighting, is sharply analgous the overall ride. This is a very good novel, a treat for anybody familiar with Nabokov, but it definitely can stand its own ground. Either by comparison to Nabokov's more brillant later work, or on its own, this novel is a dark little comic-tragedy.
Rating:
Summary: a bit thin, but getting vivid
Review: This novel, also one of the Nab's earliest, shows him as a maturing writer. While the plot is a bit banal, the Nab brings great vividness and such well-drawn characters to it that I remember some of them from first reading it 20 years ago. THe lives in this are unremittingly dreary, mediocre, and only briefly tinged by passion. I expected more, but it isn't a complete dud.
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Summary: Nabokov's own favorite among many.
Review: This was Nabokov's second novel, published when he was a mere 28 years old. Thirty-nine years later, after writing so many other fabulous books he said of King, Queen, Knave "of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest." By this he meant that he enjoyed contemplating its "rapturous composition" and reminiscing of how the idea for it first came to him on the coastal sands of Pomerania. The book maintained a special place in his heart. The theme is in many ways similar to Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, as Nabokov himself admits in the Foreword to the revised English version. I love those other books dearly, but Nabokov's contains several twists and turns that are even more dramatic and less likely for the reader to detect ahead of time than either of those other classic husband/wife/paramour triangle stories. The setting here is Berlin in the 1920's. The young, unsophisticated Franz arrives on the doorstep of his rich uncle Dreyer with hopes of securing a job in his department store. He gets the job and repays Dreyer's magnanimity by falling for his beautiful wife Martha. (Franz's aunt? Hello!) Martha's seduction of Franz seems to be motivated by something at least bordering on pure boredom, but at any rate, the triangle is set. Dreyer, oblivious to this development, plods on with his money-making schemes and inventions/diversions. Martha, in a departure from the more suicidal natures of Anna K. or Emma B. decides rather to begin clumsily plotting her husband's death so that she and Franz will be able to live happily ever after on his money. But things are not so easy in anything Nabokovian are they? Well, things don't work out the way they're supposed to here either, and that's all I will say. Far be it from me to unravel a rope the Nabokov has so skillfully stretched tight. By the end of this story Franz's conscience lies in tatters, and Martha is _____! The only reason I don't give the book a perfect 5 stars is because the very ending left me a tad bewildered. I attribute that to a fault in my reading of it and trust that you, being much sharper than I, will rate your experience with King, Queen, Knave a star higher than I did.
Rating:
Summary: a mere preview
Review: Vladmir Nabakov may be the closest kin in the twentieth century to the magnificent imagination of "The one thousand and one Arabian Nights". Yet this is not entirely an apt comparison, for whereas the "Nights" was a framework in which the dreams were presented as a reality, Nabakov's is a strange world wherein the reality is painted as a lush, evanescent dream. But beware the reader, who thinks this mere clever wordplay, for to read Nabakov is to be entranced into a highly sophisticated web where life is as much a romantic dirge as a brilliant puzzle. King, Queen, Knave was by his own admission, "my gayest novel", and yet there is a kind of sadness here amidst the gaiety and superlative sequence of almost divine juxtapositions that I have only experienced from the likes of a virtuoso rendition of Paganini.
The basic story is a simple love triangle, a rich Uncle, a faux nephew and a cold aunt, and of course involves an illicit affair culminating in a murderous plot. And yet what is not simple is how Nabakov deftly draws these characters, at once ultra real and but also aloof, blatant caricatures of the human soul. Like a pack of playing cards, thinking themselves to be free, but fully boxed in. And it's quite amusingly funny, but Nabakov's humor springs from diverse and often mundane sources - the ambience, the shaggy dog, the inward blindness of his protagonists and situations involving the Uncle and the two lovers where the former is completely unaware that he is being cuckolded right under his canopy. Personally, though, what I find most delightful is the poetic details that N throws in gratuitously everywhere, e.g.- The time when Uncle Dreyer, who is the owner of a large Berlin Department store pays a surprise visit to his nephew and his cohorts who work in the sporting goods dept. And "An early customer, who wanted another ball for his dog, was ignored for an instant" or consider "an old sculptor whose work was so lifelike that he managed to convey the impression of acute chorea". The descriptions of the lovemaking are also highly erotic - but I won't quote from that, not to mention the brilliant morphing of scenes and persons. Enough said. This book is a veritable masterpiece and a highly entertaining one at that.
One final quote: "A baker in the encyclopedia who had poisoned an entire parish told the prison barber who was shaving his neck that never in his life had he slept so well".
And there is a wonderful twist even in the last paragraph.
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