For me, reading Vladimir Nabokov is a little like falling in love. I find his straightforward, unshowy language, humor, facile mind, and brilliant stories pretty much irresistible. Turns out his life is as irresistible a story as his novels. “Speak, Memory,” by the way, does not provide an analysis of those novels, or of his short stories, plays, interviews, biographies, criticism, translations, letters, or poetry. It’s just the story of a life.

Vladimir Nabokov was born in Saint Petersburg in 1899. The first published “Speak, Memory” was written in English in the late 1940s. When his family read the book, they had corrections. 

“Certain matters were dismissed by my advisers as legends or rumors or, if genuine, were proven to be related to events or periods other than those to which frail memory had attached them,” he wrote. He then revised the book:

“For the present, final, edition of “Speak, Memory” I have not only introduced basic changes and copious additions into the initial English text, but have availed myself of the corrections I made while turning it into Russian. This re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had been an English re-telling of Russian memories in the first place, proved to be a diabolical task, but some consolation was given me by the thought that such multiple metamorphosis, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried by any human before.”

Butterflies are a big part of Nabokov’s life, and of this book. From his earliest days, he was an avid butterfly hunter. Their pursuit occupies many pages in “Speak, Memory.” Several of his butterfly collections reside in museums in Europe and America.

Nabokov’s family was wealthy, his father was a diplomat, and their life, until the Bolshevik Revolution, was one of great privilege. They had around 50 servants, among them two chauffeurs, a butler, a kitchen chef, a pantry boy, a footman, a doorman, a head coachman, a gardener, governesses, and tutors for several languages. All this changed with the revolution. 

Nabokov’s father was arrested in the winter of 1917, but in the midst of a chaotic imprisonment, “my father followed a dim corridor, saw an open door at the end, walked out into a side street and made his way to the Crimea with a knapsack he had ordered his valet…to bring him to a secluded corner and a package of caviar sandwiches which…our cook had added of his own accord.”

 The family fled Russia in 1919, and their good luck ended in 1922, when the elder Nabokov stepped in front of an assassin’s bullet meant for another man.

What a childhood! What memories! And how blessed to have enough memories to fill a book. Chapters are only loosely chronological; instead, they each refer to an aspect of Nabokov’s life, his beloved family, his time in exile, those butterflies, his first strike into poetry, his first love. 

Here is a bit from the chapter on learning to read:

“My first English friends were four simple souls in my grammar—Ben, Dan, Sam and Ned. There used to be a great deal of fuss about their identities and whereabouts—“Who is Ben?” “He is Dan,” “Sam is in bed,” and so on. Although it all remained rather stiff and patchy (the compiler was handicapped by having to employ—for the initial lessons, at least—words of not more than three letters), my imagination somehow managed to obtain the necessary data. Wan-faced, big limbed, silent nitwits, proud in the possession of certain tools (“Ben has an axe”), they now drift with a slow-motioned slouch across the remotest backdrop of memory.”

Maybe these early lessons gave Nabokov the elegant simplicity for which his writing is known. In spite of this, “Speak, Memory” is seasoned with phrases in French, Russian, and German. You can mostly get the gist of these untranslated comments, but some readers might find them a little off-putting. Only a little, though. The book is 98 percent pure delight.

Doris Ober is the former managing editor of the “West Marin Review,” author of “The Dogtown Chronicles” and “The Alzheimer Years,” and an avid reader. She lives in Point Reyes Station.