Poirier wrote in a 1974 New York Times review, “Vadim is allowed to do nothing that will surprise Nabokov, to test nothing that Nabokov hasn’t already tested,” and this is a weakness. This criticism corresponds with a theme that our class’ professor has often raised, that while Nabokov’s protagonists are smart, Nabokov is smarter than they are. Also, Poirier praises how the “puzzles and teasers are fun” in the novel, although some will go over the heads of people who lack “detailed knowledge of the whole of Nabokov’s oeuvre. … the puzzles are without the resonance of personal drama [that was in] Lolita and Pale Fire.”

Maloff echoed a common criticism of Nabokov’s previous works, that they are stuffed with beautiful prose but there is nothing substantial behind the prose (an analogy our class developed is that Nabokov books are like a doughnut – sweet toppings outside, but empty on the inside), in a 1974 New Republic review. Maloff says the novel has many beautiful sentences, “But novels are not composed of beautiful sentences.”