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By turns lyrical and philosophical, witty and baffling, A School for Fools confounds all expectations of the novel. Here we find not one reliable narrator but two "unreliable" narrators: the young man who is a student at the "school for fools" and his double. What begins as a reverie (with frequent interruptions) comes to seem a sort of fairy-tale quest not for gold or marriage but for self-knowledge. The currents of consciousness running through the novel are passionate and profound. Memories of childhood summers at the dacha are contemporaneous with the present, the dead are alive, and the beloved is present in the wind. Here is a tale either of madness or of the life of the imagination in conversation with reason, straining at the limits of language; in the words of Vladimir Nabokov, "an enchanting, tragic, and touching book."… (more)
User reviews
"A School for Fools" is a journey through the mental landscape of a nameless, schizophrenic adolescent which he relates with the assistance of an author figure who may be the boy's older self. Through the
To give you a sense of what this means, here is just the opening part of the first paragraph:
"All right, but how do you begin, what words do you use? It makes no difference, use the words: there, at the station pond. At the station pond? But that's incorrect, a stylistic mistake. Vodokachka would certainly correct it, one can say 'station' snack bar or 'station' news stand, but not 'station' pond, a pond can only be near the station. Well, say it's near the station, that's not the point. Good, then I'll begin that way: there, at the pond near the station. Wait a second, the station, the station itself, please, if it's not too hard, describe the station, what the station was like, what sort of platform it had, wooden or concrete, what kind of houses were next to it, you probably recall what color they were, or maybe you know the people who lived in the houses near that station? Yes, I know, or rather I knew, some of the people who lived near the station, and I can tell you something about them, but not now, later sometime...."
When I first began to read the book, it made little sense to me. However, after reading the introduction, and understanding that the narrative is primarily an interior dialogue between the two characters the narrator believes himself to be, the novel became a little easier to comprehend. While I think I understood substantial sections of the book, there were still many parts that went right over my head. However, I still enjoyed the book, and the journey it took me on. I would recommend the book if you enjoy unconventional, difficult books, and don't mind still being puzzled by what you've read when you finish the book.