Marina, Ada's mother, pronounces her name with "long, deep" Russian "A"s, which is how a speaker of non-rhotic English would say the word "Ardor."

The book itself takes the form of his memoir, written when he is in his nineties, punctuated with his own and Ada's marginalia, and in parts with notes by an unnamed editor which suggest that the manuscript is not complete.

As they progress chronologically, this structure evokes a sense of a person reflecting on his own memories, with an adolescence stretching out epically, and many later years simply flashing by.

A rough idea of the years covered by each section is provided in brackets, below, however the narrator's thoughts often stray outside of the periods noted.

Throughout this part of the novel, the many passages depicting the blossoming of Van and Ada's love vary in rhythm, style and vocabulary—ranging from lustrous, deceptively simple yet richly sensual prose to leering and Baroque satire of eighteenth-century pornography—depending on the mood Nabokov wishes to convey.

[9] The first four chapters provide a sort of unofficial prologue, in that they move swiftly back and forth through the chronology of the narrative, but mostly deal with events between 1863 and 1884, when the main thrust of the story commences.

Chapters 4 to 43 mostly deal with Van's adolescence, and his first meetings with his "cousin" Ada—focused on the two summers when he joins her (and her "sister" Lucette) at Ardis Hall, their ancestral home, in 1884 and 1888.

In 1884 Van and Ada, age 14 and 12, fall passionately in love, and their affair is marked by a powerful sense of romantic eroticism.

It later transpires that Marina gave the child to her sister to replace the one she had lost—so she is in fact Van's mother—and that her affair with Demon continued until Ada's conception.

Van moves to live with Cordula de Prey, Percy's cousin, in her Manhattan apartment, whilst he fully recovers.

Van spends his time developing his studies in psychology, and visiting a number of the "Villa Venus" upper-class brothels.

In the autumn of 1892, Lucette, now having declared her love for Van, brings him a letter from Ada in which she announces she has received an offer of marriage from a wealthy Russian, Andrey Vinelander.

He then leaves his Manhattan apartment and preoccupies himself with hunting down a former servant at Ardis, Kim Beauharnais, who had been blackmailing them with photographic evidence of their affair, and savagely beating him with an alpenstock until he is blind.

She attempts to seduce him on the crossing and nearly succeeds, but is foiled when Ada appears in the film, Don Juan's Last Fling, which they watch on board.

Van meets with them, and has an affair with Ada whilst pretending that they are engaged in uncovering Lucette's fortune (supposedly concealed in various hidden bank accounts).

This part comprises Van's lecture The Texture of Time, apparently transcribed from his reading it into a tape recorder as he drives across Europe from the Adriatic to meet Ada in Mont Roux, Switzerland, while she herself is en route from America via Geneva.

In 1971, the "Penguin Books" series published Ada with footnotes by Vivian Darkbloom (a pseudonym and anagram of Vladimir Nabokov's first and last name).

The book was heavily promoted by McGraw-Hill, which contributed to its good sales results; Ada reached number four on The New York Times bestseller list, and reviews of it appeared on the front pages of major magazines.

[17] Garth Risk Hallberg found the book challenging, but also acclaimed its prose and argued that Nabokov "manages a kind of Proustian magic trick: he recovers, through evocation, the very things whose losses he depicts.

"[18] David Auerbach felt that both Ada and its lead characters were alienating, and believed that Nabokov knew readers would find them so.

[19] In a discussion with the Kyoto reading circle, Brian Boyd finds this unconvincing;[20] others have pointed out the lack of textual support for this hypothesis and several examples of fantastic worlds within Nabokov's work.

[21][22] Matthew Hodgart writing for The New York Review of Books appreciated Ada for its excellent erotic fragments and the novel's linguistic layer.

[23] Many critics have found autobiographical features in the novel, seeing the title character as a portrait of Véra Nabokov, the writer's wife.

One of them was Robert Evans of Paramount Pictures, who suggested to the author that Roman Polanski should handle the film adaptation of the work.