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53 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Disturbing , 21 Jun 2006
I was interested to see how `Lolita' would read, given the current climate, and was worried that Nabokov, writing in the 1950s, would somehow see paedophilia as being less serious than we would view it today. `Lolita' is undoubtedly an uncomfortable read. It is related from the perspective of a relatively unrepentant paedophile, Humbert Humbert. He documents the origins of his obsession with `nymphets' - pre-pubescent girls - and his pursuit of them. Eventually he meets Lolita, his landlady's daughter, and recounts his (eventually successful) plot to run away with her and take her for his lover while pretending to be father and daughter. Humbert's dual roles, as father and abuser, leads him to obsessive jealousy, and Lolita's accelerated adolescence leave her as a precocious adult in a child's body, scarred and cynical. Both lead to tragic consequences, and wasted lives in more ways than one.
Although Humbert is both the villain and narrator, he doesn't hide the sordidness of his crime, and the effects of abuse on Lolita are acknowledged. Nabokov brilliantly treads a fine line between making Humbert human (and seeing the world through his eyes) and recognising the reality of his crimes. Despite Nabokov's choice of making a paedophile his narrator and central character, there is little sympathy for Humbert throughout the book, and paedophilia is presented as being every bit as repugnant as it is generally viewed today. Where Humbert makes excuses for himself, it is clear that they are Humbert's, not Nabokov's, excuses, and we are not expected to sympathise. Humbert's actions are also not presented as being in any way erotic. There are no graphic descriptions either, the suggestion is enough.
Because Nabokov treats his subject so skilfully, `Lolita' was a fantastic book. It was a balanced psychological portrait of a repulsive man, who watches himself destroying lives. The subject matter was difficult, but Nabokov deal with it brilliantly. The language is lyrical and clever, and there is enough black humour to take the edge off an otherwise disturbing book. Deservedly labelled a twentieth century classic, and not a book to be avoided.
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
enrapture, 21 Aug 2004
I read this book expecting to be sickened. The story of a 40-year-old's obsession with very young girls (or "nymphets") as said 40-year-old calls them) and in particular the beautiful Dolores "Lolita" Haze, there is certainly plenty of material in this book for controversy. However, as soon as I had read the first page I know that this was no deliberately shocking novel, but instead a subtle, enchanting story of enrapture and lust. Everyone can relate to the longing Humbert feels for someone he knows will never lust after him, and the agony and ecstasy of his forced yet somehow tender affair with 12-year-old Dolores is described in absolutely stunning detail. I finished the novel enchanted but also subtly disturbed, as you have to keep reminding yourself that this man is obviously a ruthless paedophile. Read this and prepare to be both symapthetic and disgusted towards your narrator. A beautiful, daring and subversive work of almost-genius.
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35 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
So nearly the greatest novel ever written., 2 Feb 2005
It's a brave reviewer who has a pop at Nabokov. You'll find your own favourite authors writing eulogies to the man, saying his prose is delicious, it coruscates with genius, it glows in the dark. That Lolita is a brilliant evocation of a warped and twisted love. And they're right, it is - for the first 100 pages. After which the story goes skidding off the rails and you're left floundering and disbelieving and very very cross.The story is well-known. Monsieur Humbert Humbert is a second-rate academic with ideas above his station. He arrives in an ordinary household in small-town America, contemptuous of the everyday domesticity, the mother-daughter wrangles, the flabby women with their house-proud homes and magazine-ad sensibilities. He moves in with poor, despised Mrs Haze and therein utterly destroys two human beings. Within weeks the mother is dead and the daughter abducted and abused, not once, but day in, day out for years. In his own wretched mind he loves the girl. The genius of Lolita is in its portrayal of evil not as something demonized and monstrous the way the tabloids depict it, but as petty and pathetic. And true. Humanity never has been at risk from larger-than-life fiends, but from the twisted visions of weak, pitiful men with chips on their shoulders and a dark star to lead them. The first 100 pages of Lolita tell us all we ever need to know about the sheer paltriness of perversion. So why on earth didn't he stick with it? Lo is eventually rescued and Humbert goes screaming after the pair of them. A chase ensues right across the States and - get this - Lo's rescuer leaves a trail of clues in the form of tricky intellectual puzzles in hotel registers and... oh it's so silly I'm embarrassing myself writing about it. Everything that worked before has gone. What chilled us was the juxtaposition of the banal and the atrocious. Now we have two smart-Alec clever-dicks, playing implausible games. You will never read better prose, there isn't any. You will never read a more potent evocation of the black soul of mankind. The final chapters return us to that, and they're stunning. But in the middle there's this great swathe of self-indulgent playing about. Nabokov was a genius. Whatever was he thinking of?
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