Mary (novel)

Mary

First edition (Russian)
Author	Vladimir Nabokov
Original title	Машенька (Mashen'ka)
Translator	Vladimir Nabokov and Michael Glenny
Country	Germany
Language	Russian
Publisher	Slovo McGraw Hill (English)
Publication date	1926
Published in English	1970

Mary (Russian: Машенька, Mashen'ka), is the debut novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first published under pen name V. Sirin in 1926 by the Russian language publisher "Slovo".

Mary is the story of Lev Glebovich Ganin, a Russian émigré and former White Guard Officer displaced by the Russian Revolution. Ganin is now living in a boarding house in Berlin, along with a young German girl, Klara, an old Russian poet, Podtyagin, his landlady, Lydia Nikolaevna Dorn and his neighbour, Aleksey Ivanovich Alfyorov, whom he meets in a dark, broken-down elevator at the onset of the novel. Through a series of conversations with Alfyorov and a photograph, Ganin discovers that his long-lost first love, Mary, is now the wife of his rather unappealing neighbour, and that she will be joining him soon. As Ganin realizes this, he effectively ends his relationship with his current girlfriend, Lyudmila, and begins to be consumed by his memories of his time in Russia with Mary, which Ganin notes "were perhaps the happiest days of his life". Enthralled by his vision of Mary and unable to let Alfyorov have her, Ganin contrives schemes in order to reunite with Mary, who he believes still loves him. Eventually, Ganin claims that he will leave Berlin the night before Mary is to arrive and his fellow residents throw a party for him the previous night. Ganin steadily plies Alfyorov with alcohol, heavily intoxicating him. Just before Alfyorov falls into his drunken sleep, he asks Ganin to set his alarm clock for half past seven, as Alfyorov intends to pick up Mary at the train station the next morning. The infatuated Ganin instead sets the clock for eleven and plans to meet Mary at the train station himself. However, as Ganin arrives at the train station, he realizes that "the world of memories in which Ganin had dwelt became what it was in reality the distant past... other than that image no Mary existed, nor could exist". Instead of meeting Mary, Ganin decides to board a train to France and "move on".