Lolita (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

‘Lolita’ has to be one of the very few books that I have come across in my life that has a truly haunting quality. It grips you from the very first words and will not let go until long after you've finished reading it… That is, if you ever dare put it away (‘Lolita’ is a permanent resident of my bedside cabinet). There are so many levels to this novel and so many reasons why it will put you under its spell. Nabokov’s virtuoso command of English language is probably what did it for me when I read it for the first time (am I the only one who finds it hard to believe the author is not a native English speaker?!). I’ve given up trying to analyse this book; instead, I just let my mind drift along the mesmerizing flow of words…

I implore you to cast aside your prejudice and keep an open mind about ‘Lolita’. Forget all you might have heard about it and find out for yourself! This is definitely not a book about paedophilia and sexual perversion; nor does it justify it or make it look attractive. The main character’s obsession is just a backdrop for exploring the darker areas of human nature where no one had dared go before, in a way that no one had done before. You will savour it like a glass of exquisite red wine and will be desperate to make the last drops last when nearing the end. So make yourself comfortable, leave your phone off the hook and let its dark magic do its work…

But what a poem. Humbert Humbert is perhaps the very model of the antihero but as he is also the narrator everything is seen through the prism of his own monstrous and predatory lusts. Lolita herself, as Humbert admits, remains something of an enigma throughout. The narrator is unable to see her as an individual and she is portrayed as the archetypal 'nymphet,' who serves merely to serve his own needs. Any deviation from this role is regarded as betrayal. But then the book is entitled Lolita not Delores Hayes and 'Lolita' is no more than the perfect nymphet lurking inside Humbert's diseased brain never a girl of blood and flesh.

Humbert does not in fact offer much in the way of self justification beyond the occasional admission of insanity and his sickening claims to truly love the girl. He also seems to grow in awareness of his perversion as the novel goes on but never seems to regret it. He starts by offering various justifications of child brides from history but his final allusion is to Sade's Justine which is surely an admission of guilt. But the prose is so tender and so darkly comic that all this is repeatedly obscured and Nabokov manages to win you a twisted sympathy for his protagonist even, almost, for his predicament. So much of it seems so reasonable the way Humbert tells it.

This is largely because the way the feelings and desires of little Delores herself are so obscured by Humbert's dark longings. This of course serves to make it all the more poignant on the odd occasion that they do surface. When Humbert is in his first rapture of paradise after possessing young Lolita he describes his joy to search an extent and with such tenderness that the reader could be forgiving for believing Lolita welcomed his advances. Until he lets drop in a single sentence that she cries herself to sleep every single night.

A rich though black humour also punctuates the novel for all that it goes on to breed horror. The earlier sections especially those concerning his first wife, her Tsarist lover and Humbert's Arctic expeditions are quite hilarious. The book also deals with a definite sense of place and of being out of place. Humbert,, like Nabokov,, is a European new to the New World and though his depiction of America is not always flattering it is often insightful. No nostalgia is ever shown for 'rotting Europe' however even if he feels it gives him a superiority over the banal pretensions of his new countrymen. Despite his other predilections Humbert is a huge intellectual snob and his writing will probably appeal most to those who feel themselves akin to him in this respect, if no other.

Lolita is a dark and engrossing masterpiece and is in many ways more beautiful then it has any right to be. There is nothing pornographic or prurient about it but it does raise some quite complicated emotions in the reader. It should rightly be considered a classic but is rightly controversial and is quite simply one of the most astonishing things I have ever read. Much as I deplore censorship there is certainly something playfully dangerous about Lolita and it should only be recommended to the more sophisticated reader.