this was my first boyfriend's favorite book

Update: 06/07/2020

Having just finished A Dark Vanessa, a book I rated 5 stars I am even more certain of my hatred of this book.

Any book where the reader is forced to feel empathy for a pedophile just doesn’t do it for me. You can call me narrow minded if you like but if it were up to me they would all be castrated and set on fire and I would feel no sadness about it.

Go read A Dark Vanessa for a fantastic portrayal of an abusive relationship between a girl and a grown man. Not this shit.

P.s I’m probably gonna get loads of shit for this review, I don’t care. If you liked it great, I’m glad you got something out of it. But don’t come at me.

********************

I’m thinking of DNFing. I’ve been told this is an important book and it makes you think. But the subject matter is just vile and it’s making me feel ill. I’m not enjoying it and I don’t know if I can carry on with it. Maybe one day I’ll try again but today is not that day.

يوميات متحرش بالأطفال


:::::::::::::::::::::

س: عرف العمل الأدبي الكلاسيكي

ج هو عمل غالبًا لا تستطيع أن تفهم سبب شهرته وخلوده
مهما حاولت التمحيص والتفحيص
فلا شيء سوى لسان طويل طويل يخرج لك
مستهزءا باليوم اللي - اتهبلت فيه ف عقلك وقلت ياروايات

وقد يصاحب ذلك محاولات متكررة في شد شعرك مستميتا في المحاولة
لما هذا السفه قد يعتبر عملَا أدبيا خالدا؟؟

;;;;;;;;;;

الرواية تبرز إمكانات ناباكوف الضعيفة والمثيرة للشفقة
-مع مراعاة الزمن الذي كتبت فيه الرواية
فذلك السرد وتلك اللغة لا يتركان مجالا للشك

وكأن هذا الرجل قد أقسم بأغلظ الأيمان على فقع مرارة قارئه

فبعيدا عن الاشمئزاز الممزوج ربما ببعض الحزن
على حال الفتاة المسكينة التي تغتصب يوميا

تجد أن الرواية سخيفة لا تثير في نفسك اي مشاعر أو متعة أدبية
إنها صفحات من الملل الصرف

بطل لا تتعاطف معه
فتاة لا تحاول الرواية إضافة بعدا أو عمقا لشخصيتها
حدوتة لا تجذبك بحال

;;;;;;;;;;

لوليتا القتاة ذات الإثني عشر ربيعا
"هي واحدة من "الحوريات المسعورات
كما يسميهن البطل الهمام
وهو رجل رائع يقدر الطفلات البريئات كثيرة
ولا يشبع من رغبته النهمة فيهن
وذلك قدر ما هو حنون ونبيل
O:)

أحيانا يجرب النساء الناضجات-ما هي حاجة ببلاش كده
وذلك لسد الحاجة حين تفيض الشهوة عن الحد-امّال هيعمل ايه يعني
:'(

وطوال أحداث الرواية الميمونة
يحدثك البطل ال(حونين بالقوي) عن رغباته الشريفة تلك
عن كيف بدأت معه وكيف حاربها (ياعييييني ياخوييا) حتى غلبته
ثم يستمر غالبا في وصف شبقه الذي لا ينتهي لجسد الفتاة المسكين

أما عن الأحداث القليلة المتبقية
والتي ظن الكاتب أنه بها يعمق روايته ويكسبها قيمة أدبية
فهي حقا تبهرك
-أنا كهدى انبهرت

فالبطل يواجه -حبيب قلب أمه حكما بالإعدام
ولوليتا تتزوج من آخر بعدما كبرت
والحقيقة ممكن تكمل الباقي من أي مسلسل عربي يعجبك

أما عن طريقة السرد
فشعرت دوما في السطور التي كان يحاول أن يتفلسف فيها
بحذلقة و تكلف وسخف غير مبرر على الإطلاق

;;;;;;;;;;

باختصار لم أحبها
لم تجذبني
أندم على الوقت الذي ضيعته منتظرة أن تبدأ القصة بالتحسن

نصيحة#
متقراهاش
الدنيا فيها كتب عظيمة وعبقرية كتير
لما نخلصهم الأول

Astoundingly beautiful prose, a self-aware psychotic narrator who is both unapologetic and yet disgusted by his crime...so many themes in this book, so much symmetry (342).

Humbert Humbert knows he is both brilliant and insanely obsessed with pre-pubescent girls. He tortures his psychiatrists "cunningly leading them on; never letting them see [he] knew every trick of the trade" (P. 34). He becomes a lodger with Ms. Haze, a widow, and sees his nymphet in her yard, "a blue sea-wave swelled under [his] heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses." (P. 39) He obsesses over Lo listening - in his fateful diary - to details as minor as "the staccato sound [a toilet paper roll makes] as it turns." (P. 49). The text is both reprehensible and hilarious, the writing always being of a sublimely dreamy quality. Was Roth inspired by this scene when he wrote of Nathan Zuckerman hunting around the room of Amy Bellette in The Ghost Writer?

Fate throws HH and his Lo together (no spoilers, I promise). HH holds a reformatory existence over her as a ransom for the naughtiness he extracts. There are a few epic road trips:

"As we pushed westward, patches of what the garbage-man called 'sage brush' appeared, and then the mysterious outlines of table-like hills, and then red bluffs ink-blotted with junipers, and then a mountain range, dun grading into blue, and blue into dream, and the desert would meet us with a steady gale, dust, gray thorn bushes, and hideous bits of tissue paper mimicking pale flowers among the prickles of wind-tortured withered stalks all along the highway; in the middle of which there sometimes stood simple cows, immobilized in a position (tail left, eyelashes right) cutting across all human rules of traffic." (P. 153)

How did Nabokov pull this off? He arrived in the US in 1941 and conceived Lolita during a drive out in the Western US in 1955 (otherwise how could you explain the precision and realism of the above sentence?) This being his third work in a non-native English language (translated by him back to Russian in 1965 - parenthetically are there any Russophones reading this post that have read both the English and Russian Lolitas? What is the Russian one like?)

I love this description of an otherwise nondescript gas station in the middle of nowhere:

"I stared in such dull discomfort of mind at those stationary trivialities that looked almost surprised, like staring rustics, to find themselves in the stranded traveler's field of vision: that green garbage can, those very black, very whitewalled tires for sale, those bright cans of motor oil, that red icebox with assorted drinks, the four, five, seven discarded bottles within the incomplete crossword puzzle of their wooden cells, that bug patiently walking up the inside of the window of the office." (P. 211)

I could only dream of aspiring to write descriptions like that, and English is my native language. Pure genius.

There is a lot of tennis in the novel, particularly towards the end leading me to wonder if DFW was a huge Nabakov fan (being similarly obsessed with the sport.) Here is a description of chess that certainly must have given DFW some inspiration:
"I saw the board as a square as of limpid water with rare shells and stratagems rosily visible upon the smooth tessellated bottom, which to my confused adversary was all ooze and squid-cloud." (P. 233)

There is a wonderful little poem near the end:
"The moral sense in mortals is the duty
We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty." (P. 283)

The central problem in the novel is of course HH's seduction of Lo and her sometimes complicity (rebelling against the mother who never loved her). But both he and Lo are aware that he is a sham:
"It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer the waif." (P. 287)

Nabokov insisted that there is no moral to this novel - it is neither a condoning nor condemnation of incest. That kind of judgmental attitude would clearly have ruined the text. That being said, we clearly see that HH is a hopeless pervert and a predator, a father's worst nightmare- and we see how Lo ends up - lost, but defiant to the end.

The topic is, of course, extremely taboo, but Nabakov’s gift to get inside HH’s head and show us how dark and twisted his rationale is, as well as the clear damage it causes to Lolita serves to condemn the aspect of using one’s intellectual and physical power as well as a way of subjugating a young victim to predation. That this particular victim revealed her inner strength in both the struggle and the capitulation is what makes it great literature. If we contrast this with Boris Vian’s I Spit on Your Graves from 1946, where raping little girls is just a way of blowing off steam and rebelling against the system, we see that Lolita and HH are self-conscious characters whereas the first-person protagonist in Vian is just a licentious, violent psychopath with zero guilt or restraint and with no conscience other than some racist, pseudo-socialist ideals.

Lolita is a novel of extraordinary power and beauty in which Nabokov challenges us to read beyond our disgust and fear and live uncomfortably in HH's mind for 300 beautifully written pages. Hard to forget and impossible to ignore, it is Nabokov's greatest contribution to literature imo.

Other formerly shocking novels of previous centuries have lost their power, batteries quite flat (Madame Bovary, Ulysses, Lady Chatterly’s Lover) – we love them still but we wince no more, we may be quite amused at the idea that this word or that idea was not allowed in polite society – we may, indeed, be vastly amused at the very idea of polite society because society is just not very polite at all these days. But uniquely, Lolita, this great and appalling novel, only gets more shocking and more dangerous as the years go by, as more and more paedophilia is uncovered every other day in the news, in nurseries, in hard drives, in the highest of churches, as the paranoia spreads. I found myself quite nervous about even being seen reading Lolita at work. And very glad the cover was an awful grey with a hideous attempt at a butterfly in the corner, and not the suggestive white-socks-and-short-school-skirt of some editions.

Lolita is the blackest of all comedies, the blackness of a deep mine of human corruption with all the canaries long dead in the poisonous atmosphere. It’s a comedy about depravity. You want to know what depravity is? These days, that’s a quaint word. Reminds me of that risible phrase of the censors “a tendency to deprave and corrupt”. Here is depravity :

This was an orphan. This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning. (p140)

When, during our longer stops, I would relax after a particularly violent morning in bed, and out of the goodness of my lulled heart allow her – indulgent Hum! – to visit the rose garden or the children’s library… (p160)

Thrusting my fatherly fingers deep into Lo’s hair from behind, and then gently clasping them around the nape of her neck, I would lead my reluctant pet to our small home for a quick connection before dinner. (p164)

… and her sobs in the night – every night, every night – the moment I feigned sleep. (p176)

Depraved is when you don’t wish to acknowledge the pain you’re doling out as you feast and guzzle, or, yes, you do acknowledge it, with a sad shrug, oh la, alas, it is sad but that is how it is, or perhaps it’s when these tears, this misery, makes your pleasure even more piquant and delectable. I think Humbert bounces gently between the three. Yes, poor little Lo. As he says himself:

I entered a plane of being where nothing mattered, save the infusion of joy brewed within my body.

As you read Lolita the uncomfortable feeling steals over you that whilst VN had no direct knowledge of his grisly subject, nevertheless he’d thought about it a bit too much. In HH’s mind, and we are never out of it, we go fumbling, frolicking, frottaging and frothing in paroxysms of nympholepsy, we hang over his shoulder the whole time, we’re with him during every bated glimpse of little Lo’s long languid limbs, drooling, always drooling, and of course, we're with him from first spurt to last. VN didn’t have to write about a highly intelligent, highly cultured paedophile. That was his big fat choice.

WHY PAEDOPHILIA?

I stumbled upon this quote from the wonderfully named Leland de la Durantaye in the Village Voice:

To search for the experiences leading to a work of art is as natural as not finding them.


I’m not altogether sure what VN was up to. Yes, Lolita is a case study, but VN hated Freud and psychoanalysis. Yes, it’s a criminal confession, but VN was a writer obsessed with self-reflecting introverted solipsistic linguistic game-playing, those are the novels he wrote, from Ada to Pnin to Pale Fire – parodies all, and he really wasn’t much interested in realism. If you were picking your team of realistic novelists, Vlad the Impaler wouldn’t even be a substitute. So it’s ironic that his one and only famous – I mean, really famous – novel is about a giant social problem which is always as fresh as today’s headlines, and never gets old, just like those nymphets.

LOVE IS THE SWEETEST THING

Perhaps Lolita is VN’s meditation on love. Because Humbert loves little Lo. He tells us so in such gorgeous sentences that you would have to have a heart of stone not to believe him. That must be it.

This nymphet thing, it’s an idea, an erotic ideal, not a person. VN’s Humbert is constantly in search of a human being who most closely embodies this ideal. He’s actually not interested in little girls at all, finds them unpleasant – except insofar at they personify the nymphet idea. At that point he turns into a sick junkie whose connection has just arrived. But the girl will only be desirable for two, maybe three years. As soon as the girl in question grows up & passes into adolescence the poor paedophile turns away in disgust. And of course there can be very little connection between the two interested parties except on the level of carnality because one of the parties is a middle-aged male and the other is a 12 year old child. Humbert’s obsession condemns both of them to profound loneliness, as well as morbid co-dependency – he can’t allow either of them to have any normal friendships. This whole hideous situation is laid out for our bug-eyed perusal – the fulfillment which can only ever be coercive, the love which can only ever be rape, the relationship which can only ever be damaging.

Humbert loves his little Lo. We know because he tells us so.

Don’t think I can go on. Heart, head – everything. Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, . Repeat till the page is full, printer. (p109)

And I looked and looked at her and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. (p277)

Even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delta be tainted and torn – even then would I go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raccous young voice, my Lolita. (p278)

In 1963 Phil Spector put out a single by The Crystals written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King called “He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)” – it took them a week or so to realize that their audience found the song repulsive and it was withdrawn. But that idea of what love is can be found in every other courtroom. I found her in bed with another man so naturally I shot her. I loved her so much but she told me she was leaving so of course I killed her. I couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving. She died because I loved her. I loved her to death. Day in, day out, this is the love in many men’s minds. This is the cold polar opposite of If You Love Somebody Set Them Free. That happy sentiment is thought to be Not Love At All by many people. Possession is nine tenths of the conjugal domain. HH owns Lolita, she can’t go anywhere. He glories in how much his she is.

Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe’s and Bea Dante’s, and what little girl would not like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanties? (p107)

Maybe that nasty Nabokov is suggesting that the nature of love is that love does not care about the loved one, not really, it says it does, but when you look at the thing closely, it doesn’t. The weddings, the honeymoons, the diamonds, the sweet words, all of it, maybe that’s just for your benefit, all bribes. Could even Vlad be that cynical? Maybe.

HUMBERT HUMBERT WAS GAY

I think this theory is reductive, demeaning and wrong. But he was very camp.


THOUSANDS OF LOLITAS

Childhood for girls didn’t used to be as protected as it is now in the west, and it still isn’t, of course, for many girls in many countries in 2011. Humbert’s crimes against Lolita would not be seen as crimes at all in many places. There are plenty of tour guides who will assist you if you want to be Humbert for a week or two in Vietman or Cambodia. There’s thousands of Lolitas out there if that’s your cup of tea. In the West the Victorians invented childhood* and their earnest reformers tried and eventually succeeded in sweeping away the crowds of child prostitutes which thronged Hyde Park and the other thoroughfares of London as they did in the time of Samuel Johnson. Liberal Western culture has re-engineered the whole notion of childhood but it’s perpetually under attack

From the Lancashire telegraph

‘Don’t take away their childhood’ say East Lancashire mums
2:40pm Wednesday 22nd June 2011

PUSH up bras for nine-year-olds, ‘WAG’ slogan T-shirts for pre-schoolers and high heeled shoes for toddlers. These might sound like ludicrous concepts, but over the past year a string of high street retailers have been criticised for selling such items.


VERY ODD

Lolita is a strange book. After grinding away in the literary undergrowth for decades, catching butterflies and dodging Nazis, VN spent 5 years writing it and a couple more years finding a publisher, and then WHAM! Number one best-seller. Fame, notoriety, and heaps of crisp dollar notes came raining down. He quit his job and left America, lived a swish life in Switzerland. He was in his late 50s and he’s written a novel everyone wanted to read and – I am going to guess – few people actually finished. Lolita displaced Anatomy of a Murder as the No 1 bestseller, and was replaced in turn by Doctor Zhivago. Those first eager purchasers, they were looking for a shocking frolick, and they got a second James Joyce, brilliant, wild, too clever by half, terrifying, witty, revolting and, of course, ferociously cultivated. Was that what they wanted?

You read novels and you think well, this was good, but that plot there or this conclusion or that style could have been improved, you know, so, only 3.5 stars. But Lolita is a novel which writes its own rules, a mesmerising mashup of horror, beauty, wildness, syntactical dexterity and adventures in extreme obsession and extreme vocabulary, a novel that I am amazed exists at all.


*http://engl212fc.wordpress.com/2010/1...

I wasn't even going to write a review of Lolita after finishing it, because, honestly, how many reviews does this classic need? That is, until I started pocking around and reading what others have to say about it. Many reactions to this book are puzzling to me. In this world of Jerry Sanduskys and such, there are still people who find this "erotic," who in the end feel some kind of compassion toward the narrator, who think that Lolita was the one who seduced and manipulated poor Humbert? Well, I beg to differ.

Lolita is as erotic as Speak is pornographic. As for favorable opinions of Humbert, I guess it is possible this effect can be attributed to Nabokov's mastery of deception. Clearly, Humbert still, half a century after the novel's publication, manages to fool readers, and himself, into believing that he is a dedicated, caring lover, wounded and changed by an early tragic romance. Only occasionally does the truth bleed through his self-delusion - Lolita's wistful glance at a child sitting on his father's lap, a simple act that is forever sallied by Humbert's filth, her disinterest in life, her resignation to satisfy him for pocket money and permission to participate in a school play. No, Humbert did not fool me into feeling sorry for him.

On a technical level, Lolita deserves full 5 stars - the language, the wit, the world play! - I don't think I've ever read anything like this before. But emotionally this look into a pedophile's psyche is so disgusting, I can't quite bring myself to rate it so. Humbert is so sickly real to me, with his apologies, justifications of his behavior, cowardice, sob stories and bending of reality, how does an author create someone like this? How did Nabokov get such an intimate knowledge of someone so despicable?

“I didn’t say I liked it. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.” - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Nabokov is brilliant because if you had to write a character, one of the least sympathetic characters would be a pedophile. However, this is exactly who our main character is.

Lolita centers on Humbert Humbert, a man obsessed with a 12-year old girl. He unapologetically describes his obsession, how he willingly sacrifices his entire life for her.

Lolita is fleeting. Humbert understands that the girl will age and outgrow his obsession. What is disturbing is that almost all romantic relationships follow a similar timeline.

When we first fall in love, our brains are awash in high levels of dopamine, high levels of cortisol, and low levels of serotonin. Serotonin is associated with obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Have you ever tried not to think of someone but are drawn helplessly back? Thanks, Serotonin!

After one or two years, the cortisol and serotonin return to normal levels. Now, will your “love” really last, when you realize that the person sitting across from you actually has faults and imperfections?

On this reread of Lolita, I am now plagued by the question: Is Humbert telling the truth? Do I believe that the events unfolded as he described them? If the eyes are the window to the soul, why do we first meet Lolita with sunglasses on?

There is an interesting Yale lecture on Lolita found on YouTube.

The lecturer asked, “Would you like to have dinner with Humbert Humbert (understanding that the entire audience is outside the age of a nymphet)?”

How much do you believe Vladimir Nabokov personally is reflected in the novel?

Do you think Mr. Humbert is sorry for his obsession?

Does Mr. Humbert trivialize what he is doing in the novel?

Lolita is a retelling of sorts. At the beginning of the book, Humbert describes a relationship with Annabel Lee. This is actually a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

If you enjoyed Lolita, you may also want to check out My Dark Vanessa.

How much I spent:
Softcover text (Penguin Classics version) - $11.69 at Blackwell's
Audiobook – 1 Audible Credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or roughly $9.56 per credit)

2025 Reading Schedule
JantA Town Like Alice
FebtBirdsong
MartCaptain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
AprtWar and Peace
MaytThe Woman in White
JuntAtonement
JultThe Shadow of the Wind
AugtJude the Obscure
SeptUlysses
OcttVanity Fair
NovtA Fine Balance
DectGerminal

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LUST AND LEPIDOPTERY
(Legend of a Licentious Logophile)

1. Libidinous linguist lusts after landlady's lass.
2. Lecherous lodger weds lovelorn landlady.
3. Landlady loses life.
4. Lascivious lewd looks after little Lolita.
5. Lubricious Lolita loves licking lollipops lambitively.
6. Licentious lecturer loves Lolita louchely.
7. Lechery lands lusty lamister in legal limbo.
8. Lachrymose libertine languishes in lockup.

n  n    You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.n  n

This is a book I kind of hated and kind of loved, and when I first started writing this review, I did not know how to evaluate it. So I went through the reviews, and I realized what I wanted to say: it honestly amazes me that anyone is able to read this as a romance.

It's quite clear that this is not meant to be a romance. even ignoring that it's quite literally about a twelve year old and a thirty-seven year old, it is made SO clear that he knows he's taking advantage of her situation and simply doesn't care?

And it is for this reason I enjoyed Lolita. I think the reason I enjoyed - or maybe appreciated - this so much was I never thought the narrative was romanticizing what was going on; it was more like an acknowledgement, a book of horror meant to draw its eye.

It’s a masterful use of unreliable narrator, and here - unlike in a lot of other books that recieve praise for unreliable narrator - Nabokov makes his use of this device textual. Lola’s behavior is, at its peak, the behavior of a rebellious twelve-year-old, not the behavior of the seductive, uncaring Lolita Humbert wants us to believe her to be.

He has this strange pride in himself and this strange analysis of his idea, and of his pathologic ability to justify his illness; he’s replaying this episode of his childhood, in which he had consexual sex with a girl his age, as if it justifies his later preying upon Lola. He claims that she seduced him when she has not, when her behavior, though inappropriate, is essentially the behavior of an unaware twelve-year-old wanting someone in the world. And in places, his deeper mind peaks through: in the quote at the top of this page, elsewhere, when he criticizes Caroline for her hatred for her daughter, her jealousy of her daughter, her resentment. When he acknowledges Lola is only going along with his actions, to prove how grown-up she is, to prove that she wasn't lying about her sexual experience.

Perhaps the only thing I sort of didn't was the ending, which I found kind of... ridiculous. I would love to read a retelling of this in which in the end, Lola kills Humbert.

TW: pedophilia and sexual assault.
n  dangerous ideas: book 4n
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Now, this is going to be embarrassing to admit.

As we all should know, reading and enjoying a book is largely about interpretation. People are not the same and we all view things differently; one individual might see a relationship in a book as "passionate" while another could see it as "damaging". When characters make bad decisions, some will view it as stupidity and others will view it as an accurate representation of humanity's imperfections. Not only that, but time often changes the way one person sees things. A teenager does not usually have the same outlook on life and relationships that someone of thirty does, and neither of them have the same outlook as someone of seventy does.

So it's time that I admit, when reading this at thirteen, my younger brain actually romanticised Humbert's depravity and saw the relationship between him and Lolita as some tragic love affair. It was (surprise, surprise) Tatiana's review that made me wonder if I'd had a screw loose when reading this years ago. Her interpretation was so far from what I remembered that I simply had to find time for a re-read. This summer, I did just that. I am going to point the shameful finger of blame at my age when I first read it-- I was as fooled by Humbert as the young Lolita was.

Humbert is not a reliable narrator; his declaration that Lolita was responsible for seducing him is repulsive and wrong. Because, in the end, an adult has no excuse for having sex with a child, even if they're walking around half-naked and offering themselves up - adults have a responsibility not to take advantage of children. And I now realise this case is no exception. This is not some tragic romantic tale about forbidden love; it is the story of how a grown man repeatedly raped a young girl. The fact that it is so easy to be taken in by him either says something about how brilliant a writer Nabokov is (which he is), or how much society still loves to blame the victim.

I don't know whether to feel better about my original feelings or be horrified that even the description for the audiobook describes the novel as: "a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness." And I also know that I have no right to criticise other people who saw it in such a way, but I would ask you to read it again, to look beyond Humbert's snivelling and self-pity, to see the man who considers murdering a woman so he can be free to have sex with her twelve year old daughter, the man who feels sorry for himself when a young girl doesn't want to have sex with him because she's still hurt from the last time. Is that love? Maybe it was for a thirteen year old looking through Humbert's perverted eyes, but I'm glad I understand it better now.

Nabokov has written a brilliant and disturbing novel; my opinion of it hasn't changed in that respect. I found it surprisingly easy to read and became absorbed quickly - even all those years ago. His portrayal of Humbert's perverted mind is scarily good, perhaps even too good if people can so easily be convinced to side with a paedophile - which is often regarded as the ultimate crime of all, isn't it? Even cold-blooded murderers go after prisoners who've messed with kids. And, as much as I feel ashamed for being so taken in by Humbert, I know that it's not just me who was fooled. Hell, even the GR description proves it. But, believe me, Lolita is a victim and no amount of saddening flashbacks to Humbert's past can change that.

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An old friend used to say that "Ulysses" was a good book to read but not a good book to "read". After reading "Lolita" I understand what he meant.

Nabokov was a man obsessed with word games and this book is crammed cover to cover with many brilliant examples. Language delighted the man and that certainly comes across. What makes this acheivement even more amazing was that English was his third or fourth language. It is mind blowing that he or anyone could write so fluidly in a "foreign" tongue. If this was enough to make a novel great then this would be one of my top ten.

But what if, as a reader, you demand that an author make his characters compelling and the narrative involving? I would say then that this book is not for you. Humbert and Dolores Haze (Lolita) only ever (to my mind) become three dimensional at odd moments here and there. He comes off as a mincing, foppish but ultimately unbelievable sort. I never bought into him until very near the end when for a few sentences Nabokov makes his remorse credible. But it is too late for that. I was already annoyed as hell by his rococo narration. The character of Lolita as well is shrill and one note through out. Only intermittently does she come across as worthy of compassion.

As for the story, once the seduction takes place it loses a lot of its forward momentum. It begins to feel repetitive and only comes alive again when Humbert reaches the very end of his self control and attempts to lash out at one he believes wronged him. All in all I think this is a book that could stand to lose about fifty pages.

There is much to love about it though. It could have been truly replusive. Nabokov knew that his concept was already off putting and that the execution need not be so. Rather than serving up spewing fluids and hungry orifices he treats us to healthy doses of wit and charm. Bravo!

"Lolita" is obviously literature with a capital "L." It is a work by a man of letters who happened to be a genius - for that reason alone it deserves reading. Just don't be surprised that once you're done you don't feel like recommending it to anyone.

Probably everyone recalls that iconic movie poster with a blond teenager peering above her heart-shaped sunglasses, a red lollipop on the tip of her tongue. This picture is directly inspired by a line in Nabokov’s novel, where middle-aged Humbert-Humbert sees “his Lolita” for the very first time. What follows is a tender, sad, and seemingly chaste love story between a man in his forties and (in his own words) a nymphette.

Lolita is a novel in the form of a confession. It is unclear throughout H.H’s story precisely what crime he has been convicted with. Paedophilia with Lolita? Paedophilia with another girl? The murder of his wife (Lolita’s mother)? The murder of the mysterious Clare Quilty? The narrator leaves clues, but the suspense remains. What troubles him the most are not the charges against him but the guilt stemming from his past desire, love, lust, and jealousy towards his stepdaughter. This feeling of inner conflict tints almost everything in this book.

Lolita is also a great road-novel, a painting of the American landscape and (not without some sarcasm) of the American way of life, as depicted by a foreigner who drops a French line now and then. This aspect of Nabokov’s novel is perhaps the most delicate and personal. And Humbert’s passion for Lolita’s young body is probably a metaphor of the love of an old European for a rolling young country.

It is well known that, despite his scandalous subject (the Marquis de Sade would have produced an altogether different treatment of it), Lolita is in no way an erotic novel — nor is Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs a book about kinky sex. It is the novel of an aesthete, fascinated by untouched beauty, by virgin landscapes, and by a language (English) for him to reveal in its unique musicality.