The setting (almost a closed circle mystery sans mystery) reminded me a bit of Eric Ambler's 'Epitaph for a Spy' in that it all takes place largely among a hotel/pension with various characters interacting. This tangle of relationships all takes place in a small setting - a Berlin pension filled with Russian expats. All the while, Ganin basically ignores Klara, the eponymous 'girl next door', who adores him. He is trying to separate himself from Lyudmila (a woman he no longer loves or even likes), while waiting for fellow pension dweller, Alfyorov's wife (an early love?) to appear. 'Mary' centers on émigré Lev Glebovich Ganin.
It is also about anticipation: the exile's return, the lover's arrival, all the emotions of expectancy. While Nabokov's first novel purports to be about Mary, it is really about memory, nostalgia, that yearning for the past.
Amazing to think Nabokov was starting his journey here. Made into a British movie Maschenka (1987) directed by John Goldschmidt starring Cary Elwes as Lev Ganin (best known for his role as Westley in the Princess Bride), VF dj protected by mylar covering. In the end he realizes the illusion of his preimposing the past on the present and abandons his plan as he moves on to his future. Ganin discovers Alfyorov's wife to be none other than Mary, his own first love, the girl with whom in 1915 he had basked in all the radiance of young. Lev abandons his girlfriend and plots to steal Mary away from her husband as he looses himself in his memories of their love for each other. As it turns out Mary is Lev Ganin's first true love. In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. He discovers that his neighbor is waiting for his wife Mary to arrive soon from Russia. Mary Gaitskill reads Symbols and Signs, Vladimir Nabokovs first story published in The New Yorker, and discusses it with fiction editor Deborah Treisman. Maryis a gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia-Nabokovs first novel. He meets a neighbor in the boarding house another Russian emigre Aleksey Alfylorov. Mary is the story of Lev Ganin a Russian emigre and former White Guard Officer displaced by the Russian Revolution. It was published in 1926 in Russian by Slovo Publishers. McGraw Hill First Edition 1970 (stated) Mary is Vladimir Nabokov's first novel written in Berlin where he and his wife were living. Publisher: McGraw Hill Book Company New York Torontoĭescription: VF, 114 pp.
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