Readers often need to re-visit this Vladimir Nabokov story several times to grasp the nuances of the plot. The major characters are the haughty, misogynistic, first-person (and therefore unreliable) narrator and two sisters, one of whom strongly believes in the occult. Like other Nabokov stories, secret codes are involved. The acrostic message hidden in the final paragraph leaves readers wondering how much of the story came from the spirits of the then dead sisters. Themes include unfulfilled love, death, mourning, and interconnections (between memory and imagination, past and present, the real and spiritual worlds).
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