The Gift's special mixture... «Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years»

The Gift's special mixture of delay and delight conditions even the texture of the moment, the structure of the sentence. Long before this novel, Nabokov had mastered a fluid, swift style and the knack of modulating it: the elegant economy of The Defense, the spareness of Camera Obscura, the manic energy of Hermann in Despair. He could tell a story rapidly, but he also knew that while from the outside other people's lives might look as if they unwound with the speed of a cinema reel, our own self-awareness in the present extends outward in all directions, a densely furnished space with an almost immobile bulk and depth, in no way resembling a slender ribbon of film unwinding at speed from a spool. In The Gift Nabokov creates the sense of self in the present, the density and stasis of the moment, more directly than he ever has before.