Status Updates From Speak, Memory

“[...] In my own case, when I come over Sophie's troubles again—her lack of eyebrows and love of thick cream—I not only go through the same agony and delight that my uncle did, but have to cope with an additional burden—the recollection I have of him, reliving his childhood with the help of those very books. I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window. Its reflection fills the

The restraint and tenderness with which Nabokov writes about his mother is quite moving... Interesting that his mother might have had some influence in his sensitivity and interest in nature: