Product Description

The newest resident of a faculty mansion inhabited by ghosts and filled with drunks, writer Ekaterina soon takes over the top floor of the Halfmoon Hotel in Arcata Springs, where she takes on pubescent lovers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1863410 in Books
• Published on: 1993-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 373 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Harington ( The Cockroaches of Stay More ) is a down-to-earth fantasist who has considerably expanded his range this time out. Ekaterina is an acknowledged homage to Nabokov, particularly to Lolita , and if it misses some of the Russian master's visionary playfulness, it has many charms of its own to offer--particularly, for book people, its note-perfect sense of how publishing works. The heroine is a beautiful exile from an obscure corner of formerly Soviet Georgia who comes to the U.S. to teach mycology (the study of mushrooms)--a clear echo of Nabokov's butterfly passion--and, like Nabokov, becomes a bestselling novelist. As Humbert Humbert hankered after nymphets, Ekaterina's yen is for small boys--not more than 12 years old, and virginal. It is an obsession that eventually proves to be her apparent undoing when an interviewer from Paris Review turns out to be the mother of one of the boys she has seduced. That, in bald outline, is the story, but Harington has layered it with narrative gimmicks: the narrator at first tells Ekaterina's tale in an awkward second person; another character, a heavy-drinking, unsuccessful novelist who takes her to his native Bodarks, is represented by the initial I .; and eventually she tells her story herself, aided by a psychic cat. The whole of the New York Review of Books review that changed her life is reproduced (in fictional facsimile), and so is her fatal interview. All this makes for a fair amount of clutter, but Harington's magical-realist view of the U.S., and his deep attachment to his "Bodarks," is so beguiling that the reader suspends impatience.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
If, as a main character in this playfully intelligent novel about writing novels professes, "The art of fiction lies in wandering beyond the conventional into the original and outrageous." Harington's novel succeeds admirably. This despite the fact the book could aptly be subtitled "variation on a theme (and the life) of Nabokov." Both allusionary and illusionary, it centers around a Georgian (as in the former USSR) princess/mycologist/dissident who arrives in the United States with a rudimentary knowledge of English, a passion for pubescent boys, and a deep-seated fear that her Russian psychiatrist tormentor, Bolshakov, is still on her trail. With the help of a ghost and an alcoholic art historian cum novelist, she discovers her own talent for fiction and makes enough money to take over a suite of rooms in an old mountain resort hotel (a la Nabokov). Eventually, however, both Bolshakov and her taste for 12-year-olds catch up with her and her world comes crashing down. Or does it? For, after all, "Ekaterina you were, and you were not at all." There will be some outraged objectors to the book's sexual scenes, but most will find this novel enjoyable and worthwhile reading. Like its precursor, Lolita , it belongs in most academic and public libraries.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Harington's eighth novel (The Choiring of the Trees, 1991, etc.) a literary tour de force that purports to be the story of a Russian ‚migr‚e who writes bestselling and critically acclaimed novels and who also has a taste for preadolescent boys. Ekatarina (aka V. Kelian) arrives in the US with her cardboard suitcase, then moves into a big faculty house filled with ghosts, drunks, and ``a polished buffet truly covered with bottles of all sizes and shapes.'' For the rest of the novel, Harington takes us on a magical mystery tour, and what begins as an odd story about eccentrics becomes a sendup of literary culture. In the beginning, Ekatarina teaches at the Cathedral of Learning (she's an expert on mushrooms), trades stories with the house's inhabitants, and seduces 12-year-old Kenny, the son of Big Kenny or Pa, who, at 71, is the retired professor and house-owner. There are word games, parodies, and even a discussion about narrative technique, as well as an epistle dated 2021 recorded from beyond the grave. Then Ekaterina moves to Stick Around, where she lives in the Halfmoon Hotel. Once her first novel, Georgia Boy (she's from the Georgian republic), hits the bestseller lists--thanks to a long New York Review of Books piece (included in its entirety)--she finds fame, fortune, and more prepubescents, not to mention glorious sex with a hillbilly actor. Meanwhile, Morris, her cat, speaks; her editor is attacked by a former Russian (shades of Rushdie here); and finally she's killed by a Paris Review ``Art of Fiction'' interviewer--the mother of one of Ekaterina's prepubescents. (The interview and an afterword by the book's supposed editor complete the novel.) Grand entertainment from an author who's been too little known for too long: perhaps this zany homage to Nabokov (especially Lolita) will bring deserved attention to Harington's impressive body of work. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful evocation of an immigrant in a rural tourist town
Donald Harington remains the best uncelebrated author in America. "Ekaterina," set in a thinly disguised Eureka Springs, Arkansas, at a majestic old hotel (with a creepy history), is story telling at its best. The details are perfect; if you've read any of Harington's previous novels, you are richly rewarded. If you haven't, you are not harmed in the telling of the story but you will want to read the others when you've finished. This will be a book you not only enjoy but you will want to turn others onto. I once collected an autograph from a favorite famous author, William Styron, who told me, in our too-brief conversation, that Harington is one of his favorite authors. Read "Ekaterina" and you will see why.

A fabulous book
I only came across this book after reading Nabakov's 'Lolita'. And I have to say that if any of you are contemplating reading 'Ekaterina' you'd be rewarded if you read 'Lolita' first (preferably the 'Annotated Lolita' edited by Alfred Appel Jr).

One similarity between 'Lolita' and 'Ekaterina' is obvious - the disturbing theme of pedophilia. But there are so many other parallels. One in particular is the examination of authorial intrusion. In 'Lolita', Nabakov allows himself surreptitious peeps and circumlocutions as if from behind the stage of a puppet theater. And to the intelligent reader he lets it be known that he is the puppet master and that his novel is not a slice of "reality" but a work of fiction.

Similarly (but, it must be said, less subtly) Harington's manipulation of his characters implies an authorial presence at all times. Harington examines the roll of the artist as God right from the start by using the second person narrative technique. This is a technique that I have rarely come across but Harington uses it expertly.

For those of you who like reading complex novels filled with self-reflexion, intertextuality, and jokes aimed at publishers then this is a novel for you!

Highly recommended.

Great novel by a great author
I love Donald Harington! He is a great writer. He can make even a ghost seem sad and funny and full of life (ha ha). Seriously, this story mixes a sketchy heroine, a sketchy innocent young boy, and one of my favorite epic journeys home to Stay More. Almost every Harington novel has one, a journey home, a long description of the town and the mountains and what makes even a ghost-town feel like where you belong. That the heroine feels this way having never been before makes it all the more magical and inspiring. I think this is a redemptive tale, it's just hard to see at times. In his beautiful way, he makes even the worst offenders at home in his magical redneck world. There are characters like these in my small town, and I think underneath the "Lolita" homage is a real look at this part of small-town life in the Ozarks.