Finished: Pale Fire (Nabokov) Now THIS is the Nabokov book that should have been in the Top 100...not the utterly despicable Lolita. I'm so glad I gave this author another chance. He really is a great writer....which is probably one of the reasons that I was so viscerally moved in the negative way by Lolita. Anyway, Pale Fire is totally different...rather quirky, weird, but brilliant, really. Divided into three parts the book is about this absolutely exquisite poem, Pale Fire, written by sixty-two year old author and university professor, John Shade. The poem itself makes the book! It is about his life...his marriage, the loss of his daughter, his heart attack, is there life after death?, etc. Where the book takes the quirky turn is that the foreword of the book is written by Charles Kinbote, an editor and fellow professor of Shade's who moves next door to him when he gets his university job. Kinbote becomes rather obsessed with John Shade and his friendship, and though they are friendly enough to him, it doesn't look like John or his wife Sybil return the strong feelings. So, the entire forward in the explanation as to how Kinbote becomes both the editor of the poem and responsible for its publishing after John Shade is murdered! Kinbote gets Sybil to sign some documents that give him the complete rights the day of the murder even though she regrets it later and begs him to let some other publishers at least co-edit. Kinbote is beside himself with indignity because he swears to keep every word in tact. Then, the third part of the book is the "note" section. OMG, this is the majority of the book and where we get to the meat of the story. Kinbote goes off on all kinds of tangents about his own life in notes that should be simple statements about the poem. The first thing we understand is that Kinbote had truly believed in his heart that Shade's poem was going to be all about HIM and the life story he had been telling Shade about. The life story was the tale of the exiled King of Zembla, Charles. The story gets more and more bizarre and we begin to see just how insane Kinbote is as we hear the details of King Charles' young life, his reign, the overthrow of the government, his imprisonment and escape, and his eventual fleeing to America. Of course, we also get the story of the murderer, Gradus, who is a part of a secret order in Zembla who is tasked with the job of assassinating the escaped king, once they find out exactly where he is. Honestly, it's so out there that it's fascinating and I found myself really getting caught up in this obviously fake world of Zembla and Kinbote's crazy imagination. And, naturally, we soon discover that Kinbote is, in fact, the runaway king himself! He is there the day that Gradus comes to the house and accidentally shoots John Shade instead of himself, the king. In reality, the killer supposedly is an escaped mental patient who comes to kill the judge who normally lives in the house that Kinbote is leasing for the school year. Anyway...it's a wacky story, but brilliantly done! Even the index at the back goes through all the characters again and every so often has a little added jab, lol. Sadly, we do lose John Shade who was a wonderful poet. I will definitely read the poem again! This book will go into my Top 100 for sure. :-)