What is the author's style in Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov?

Vladimir Nabokov is a skilled and determined word artisan in Russian, English, and French. He first writes Laughter in the Dark in Russian while living where the novel is set, in Germany, and is known to have disapproved of the first English translation. No translator is named on the title page or verso, so it may well be that Nabokov creates this version himself. It lacks the polish and playfulness of the later Lolita, which Nabokov writes in two languages. The drollest literary allusion in this novel is naming an actress Dorianna Karenina but having had her never read "Doll's Toy" (Tolstoy).