My rating:

add to my books

Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

378 · rating details · 203044 ratings · 6654 reviews

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, ...more

Paperback, 317 pages

Published August 24th 2010 by Vintage (first published 1955)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I Should Probably Read This Sometime...

12th out of 725 books — 1,718 voters

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Everyone's Read It But Me

129th out of 324 books — 2,159 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 327832)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

May 12, 2011

Ceridwen rated it

Shelves: america-and-environs, capital-m-modern, capital-r-romantic, daddy-drinks-because-you-cry, fiction, gothic, incest-is-best, red-scare, the-housewife

Lolita is a premonition of the slasher film by way of the Gothic novel, the point of view monster breathing in the grass as the co-educational campers couple amongst the furniture of middle America. It begins with that slasher staple, the note from the shrink, a wheezy clueless sort who mistakes fact for innuendo. This whole book occurs after the blackbird whistles, just to make an obscure poetic reference. The beginning sections reminded me of my local love, the anecdotal satirist of my youth, ...moreLolita is a premonition of the slasher film by way of the Gothic novel, the point of view monster breathing in the grass as the co-educational campers couple amongst the furniture of middle America. It begins with that slasher staple, the note from the shrink, a wheezy clueless sort who mistakes fact for innuendo. This whole book occurs after the blackbird whistles, just to make an obscure poetic reference. The beginning sections reminded me of my local love, the anecdotal satirist of my youth, Sinclair Lewis, with his intricate and bawling America, laid out in sitting rooms and social climbing, Humbert the outsider, Humbert the imaginary monster, Hubert the European of our fantasies, all dissolution and our fevered dreams cum nightmares. (Har har.)

The beginning is outrageously funny, the way horror stories are, Humberts parentheses side-commenting about this and that, a dagger commentary sheathed in brackets. Wait, a moment for his parentheses. Woolf may have taught me to love the semicolon, although that affection was in full bloom before I hit her mastery, but Nabokov and his creature (his Creature) have taught me to love those brief, epigrammatic asides. I await DFW to teach me the beauty of the endnote. At some point though, the whole thing grabbed me by the throat and shook, the way a dog does with prey (a cat, a wild-eyed rabbit) and I found myself shaken into another novel completely – the road trip novel, the long, undulating America, the Gothic panic of the narrow space recreated in a thousand unnamed American burgs and their sticky hotels, the mountains (which ones?) rising purple and ground down in the distance, the Oedipal struggle completely drawn with fangs that bite Oedipus in his hoary ass. Lo Lee Ta. A series of consonants and vowels that refuse to coalesce into meaning.

Humbert is aggressively contructed, a narrator so damaged that the character is so fictional, so unreal, that it shimmers with the hot road mirage of truth, just up the bend, just under the bed. Humbert is awful, gross, a fraud, on so many levels; his Lolita, his Dolly, a work of the most perverse art. Like a character in a Browning monologue, we cannot believe anything he says, about her, about himself, the rough Freudian gloss muddling on about bad hearts and the newspaper, about childhood and its damage. Grrr, my heart's abhorrence. No. Unlike a Browning poem, we can't simply reverse Humbert's statements to see past to the facts. Messy, like a mind, like knees in the dew-wet grass. Like any good Gothic novel, the bracket of the doctor's statement is unclosed, and we end with Humbert and his musings on immortality. (Spoilers, I say, but that is ironic, at best.)

When I was 12, I had this friend. I still have her, as they say. We were not close at that time, just near in the surname alphabet, sitting close to one another, a desk away, two desks away. We liked each other; we were friends of the giggling sort. One day, she opened her purse, a denim number that looked like my own, and showed me the contents. Her eyes slanted away from mine. Look. Inside was a knife, in with the lipstick and tissue. Why do you have a knife? I asked, round-eyed, not understanding. My step-father...and here is an ellipses of details that are neither your business or mine, in the end. We slant our eyes away. I urged her naively to seek out an authority and tell, as children say. She did. It did not go well.

You can write it in yourself, and I will not disgorge the hard details of this revelation or its rending conclusion. Her story is so commonplace as to be cliché, which makes it all the worse. That is not what this book is about. This book does not mistake fact for innuendo. It is the story of the madness of storytelling; the madness of the way we construct ourselves and others; a madness that won't adhere to a lineal, Freudian causality. My friend's step-father, the real monster, was a plump, useless, banal man with a beard and fat hands, may he roast in hell forever. Humbert is not this. He is fire and words, a long prissy, fated monologue that turns fiction on itself, a long slow gin of puns – there I made one, do you see? - an unclosed bracket on the American dream. Schwink schwink schink. (less)

like 96 likes

· see review

Jun 30, 2011

Bird Brian rated it

Shelves: literature-20th-century

Fair warning: in this review, I’m going to repeat some things I’ve already said in Ian’s Lolita discussion group. I’m also going to assume the reader is familiar with the book.

If you love something, set it free.

We’re a long way from that.

This book poses a lot of big questions, and the biggest of all is whether Humbert really loved Lolita (aka Dolly, aka Dolores). I can believe that he thought he did, but did he really? He committed statutory rape. He kidnappe...more

like 42 likes

· see review

Jul 12, 2007

Namrirru rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: russian, e

Nabokov often writes his novels in the perspective of detestable villains. You never like them, you're never supposed to like them, and Nabokov doesn't like them either. He slaps them around and humiliates them. And in the end, they pay the price for their sins. Readers never seem to realize this. They become immersed in the psychology of the book and feel defiled by it all. Instead, they should sit back and watch the bastards suffer. The stories are written in their own view so that makes the p...moreNabokov often writes his novels in the perspective of detestable villains. You never like them, you're never supposed to like them, and Nabokov doesn't like them either. He slaps them around and humiliates them. And in the end, they pay the price for their sins. Readers never seem to realize this. They become immersed in the psychology of the book and feel defiled by it all. Instead, they should sit back and watch the bastards suffer. The stories are written in their own view so that makes the punishment all the more sweet. The reader knows exactly what the scheisemeister is feeling - pain, pain, pain. That's one of the reasons I like Nabokov so much. The bad guys really get it. It's not just getting killed or caught at the end, you really feel their anguish. Mmm... schadenfreude."

I sort of believe the reason why most of the characters are 2 dimensional is precisely because of who is potraying them, a depraved person. A depraved person who commits terrible, unforgivable crimes against people. How could he commit those crimes if he saw them as the human beings that they are? It's easier for a crook to swindle if he dehumanizes his victims. At the end of Lolita, Lolita transfigures. She's a sensitive, care-worn woman, but only because HH realizes her as such. That's why he can murder the man who betrayed her at the end. He was a filthy mongrel that deserved to die for what he did to her. "She groped for words. I supplied them mentally ("He broke my heart. You merely broke my life")." I don't remember, but this could be the first time he "supplied [words] mentally" in a way that's true and unselfish. He finally understood her as a person and sacrificed himself to revenge her. Perhaps, HH's only redeeming quality.

In Nabokov's books where the villain is the protagonist, the only other charachter with real depth or psychology is a character who the protagonists loves. The little daughter in Laughter in the Dark, Lolita at the end the novel, Despair? The protagonist in that one is a sociopath and doesn't give his novel-mates anything, but their personalities pop out. You can feel them from the distance. Other novels I've read by him don't exactly fit this mold. In Pnin, everyone is a little characterized but still quite real, Pale Fire is written by an almost-villain and you love everyone but him, especially the wife of the poet, Invitation to a Beheading, not even the main protagonist was very real. He had the same consciousness and feelings that a "K" would have in one of Kafka's novels. But he had no believable history, it's all just a dreamscape that doesn't have half the terror as Kafka's novels have. I never finished Ada or Ador. It's Lolita x 10 in smuttiness. "Is this really necessary??" And it wasn't believable either. Just a fantasy.

Of course, not all his novels are going to follow the same formula, but they are written by the same writer, the same mind. So I'm still working on him. I really think he's one of the best writers of the 20th century. He doesn't just tell a story, he explores the psyche and human perceptions, how a certain person feels, sees, or reacts to things. If they were normal people, it wouldn't be interesting, but he picks villains or eccentrics. (less)

like 114 likes

· see review

Mar 13, 2007

Rolls rated it

Recommends it for: pervs

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...moreAn 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.(less)

like 119 likes

· see review

Aug 16, 2010

Jason rated it

· review of another edition

Nymph. Nymphet. Nymphetiquette. Nymphology. Nymphism. I will never think of 12 year old girls the same way. There’s a stain on my brain. The power of this book is that it’s creepy and taboo, but the pedophilia and incest is so damn plausible. There’s a criminal, upsetting proclivity of the subject matter, but the whole thing is oiled with reason--SAY IT AINT SO. It’s deviant, queer, puerile, and yet ever so human, darkly human, perverted in the corner.

Lolita lingers in my mi...more

like 117 likes

· see review

Dec 01, 2007

Natalie rated it

Shelves: fiction, not-on-kindle

This book was disappointing and over-hyped.

When people talk about this book, they say things like it will "change the way you think" or that it's disquieting because it makes the reader sympathize with a pedophile. I thought wow, that much be worth reading.

Now I wonder if I read the same book as everyone else, or if *that* many people have misinterpreted it. It started out great: Humbert Humbert, the narrator, discusses different societies in the past that fo...moreThis book was disappointing and over-hyped.

When people talk about this book, they say things like it will "change the way you think" or that it's disquieting because it makes the reader sympathize with a pedophile. I thought wow, that much be worth reading.

Now I wonder if I read the same book as everyone else, or if *that* many people have misinterpreted it. It started out great: Humbert Humbert, the narrator, discusses different societies in the past that found it acceptable for very young women to have sex with much older men. He also thinks his pedophilia might be the result of his desire to regain something of a romance he had when he was a teenager, wherein the girl he was in love with died. I sympathized with him here and we were moving into morally grey territory, so I thought the book was on track to be everything everyone says it is. If he and a young girl fell in love with each other, I would certainly question a lot of things I thought before.

Nope. Nothing between him and Lolita can be described as love. Lets see, he detested Lolita's personality. He wanted to impregnate Lolita so he could molest her children and their grandchildren when she was too old for him to find attractive. He would rape her despite the fact that she cried every time. He would rape her when she was seriously ill. He mind-fucked her thoroughly. He physically abused her. He manipulated her into sex acts by paying her money and other things she wanted, effectively turning her into a prostitute.

Needless to say, I felt no moral ambiguity when the novel ended. He was just a crazy pervert. That doesn't make me rethink what love is at all, since love entered nowhere in the equation -- it was the lust of a psychologically unstable man. I wasn't disquieted by any sort of sympathy for him; past the first couple chapters it becomes clear that he's just a horrible person who tries to justify his pedophilia with things that don't sound so bad.

In fact, the novel just reaffirmed what I thought before, that pedophiles are bad people who ruin children's lives, and on the whole it seemed completely pointless.

What's worse is that it's a fairly slow read, with fifty pages passing at a time with nothing happening. Nabokov's prose is impressive and clever, but about two-thirds of the writing served no purpose so much of that same prose actually diluted and detracted from the book. I would say to myself, "That's an amazing description of something completely pointless." He seemed to just like to hear himself talking at points, and his afterward seems to confirm this. I feel like the book would have been better off if those passages had been omitted.

However, I can appreciate the realism of Humbert Humbert's character. In fact, the one thing the story had going for it was realism. It just felt pointless by the time I finished, when I was expecting something much more groundbreaking. It might be fair to blame all the people who over-hyped the book, rather than blame Nabokov. Removed from the hype its merits are easier to see.

The more I think about it, perhaps many others *have* misinterpreted the book. It seemed to me that Nabokov's purpose was to punish the narrator. I can see the appeal of that, though I still feel it was pointless. And it's certainly less lofty than some of the things the other interpretations say, but at least it's more accurate.

To be honest, I'm a little irritated that I went into reading the book based on what appears to be a completely off-base interpretation, because I can't quite undo that in my mind. On the one hand it seems unfair to criticize an author on the basis that they didn't change how I think, but I'm not sure how I could have avoided it, since the cover of my edition has a quote that calls it, "the only convincing love story of our time."

It's not a horrible book, but it's probably the most overrated book I've ever read.
(less)

like 119 likes

· see review

May 04, 2008

Chris rated it

Recommends it for: any literate fans of Casey Parker

*Ranked as one of the Top 100 Fiction of the 20th Century*
I’m not quite sure how to put this in words. Hell, I’m not sure what I intend to say, so this is going to be ugly. If you want to sit in on this exercise be my guest, you’ve probably got more important things to do, such as organizing your cassette tapes and LPs before shoving them in a box destined for the attic, believe me, your time will be better spent, especially when you take that stroll down memory lane and consider how kil...more*Ranked as one of the Top 100 Fiction of the 20th Century*
I’m not quite sure how to put this in words. Hell, I’m not sure what I intend to say, so this is going to be ugly. If you want to sit in on this exercise be my guest, you’ve probably got more important things to do, such as organizing your cassette tapes and LPs before shoving them in a box destined for the attic, believe me, your time will be better spent, especially when you take that stroll down memory lane and consider how killer it would be to rock out to Depeche Mode and A-Ha all afternoon (it’s possible you’re one of those badasses with some Dead Kennedys on cassette, more power to you, feel free to tear off your shirt and bathe with a 40oz of Big Bear). You might want to clean your bong while you’re at it; you never know how immersed you’ll get in the hazy recollections of your exploits during the New Wave or burgeoning Hardcore era and might prefer a soundtrack to complement your deranged thoughts.

As for Lolita, maybe this tangential bullshit will help get my point across… I’ve recently taken a keen interest in watching “Deadliest Catch”, but as soon as the show concludes I wonder “What have I walked away with, after investing 50 minutes and 4 rum & cokes to the accompaniment of these awe-inspiring images of man battling the elements to strike bepincered gold?” Not much, appears to be the answer; it’s just a bunch of crabs, crabs, crabs, and master-baiting, the simple ingredients of all my friendships and relationships. Sure, it’s awesome to watch sea-faring maniacs risk life and limb to haul in the nasty creatures that pay their bills, but there’s nothing else to it, just dudes getting stoked over a huge haul of crabs, or lamenting some element of the life they’ve chosen. Then you get to thinking how these dudes’ wives manage without them at sea for 20+ days at a time; obviously they are in the crab-catching business as well. And the real kick in the ass is that I don’t even eat crab, hell, I’ve never even tried a dish that incorporates any crab. When I consider the ridiculousness of it all, it seems pretty disheartening. This sort of pointless introspection is probably how Des Esseintes got his start, so I’ll leave it at that before it becomes habit-forming.

I can’t say that my opinion of Lolita is much different. It’s just Humbert Humbert endlessly rhapsodizing about nymphettes, most substantially, his nymphette, Lolita. And that’s it; I’ve probably never read anything so one-dimensional in my life. I’m sure the upper echelons of literary critics found myriad reasons beyond my primitive sensibilities for including this in the Top 100 works of 20th century fiction, I just don’t happen to see it. One of these qualifiers might be this absurd statement on the back cover, ‘Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America’. Now, when we consider the social climate at the time of publication, with book-banning and obscenity trials recently being all the rage, and you know that in order to somehow foist upon the public a tale concerning a grown man’s obsession and fornication with a 12 year old girl the defenders of this thinly-veiled smut have to somehow show that there is something above and beyond mere prurient interest hidden between the covers of the book, so statements like the one above are thrown out there to mind-f#ck all. I don’t even know what the hell that statement on the cover is supposed to mean, but ‘postwar America’ were powerful buzzwords at the time, and truly, what else could you possibly use as a thematic defense for this book, seeing as the book has nothing to offer except the ridiculous tale of a weathered old pervert ogling young girls on the hopscotch courts, finding one that epitomizes his unacceptable desires, and eventually having his way with her before attempting to completely control her young body and mind during a trek that can only be considered kidnapping on the grandest scale. Let’s not forget that when his precious nymphette is purloined by an unknown fiend, he goes off to ambush the guy and shoot his ass; this is not the behavior of the ‘hypercivilized’; my own rather sloppy upbringing declares that anyone with a shred of civility offers his adversary a duel rather than attack him unawares, Humbert is a lowly coward of the worst disposition. The ‘hypercivilized’ don’t go around bagging 85 pound kids sporting skinned knees from spills at the roller-rink, real men fish for those awesome and voluptuous Amazonians, the women who proudly stand 5’10” or more and have generous curves that modern fabrics fruitlessly struggle to contain from spilling forth in all their fully-developed glory. Our man Humbert has no such redeeming qualities; he’s a scoundrel of the lowest and basest rank. Let’s not forget that he weeps, and when I conjure a mental image of the elusive ‘hypercivilized European’, weeping like a bitch and throwing a tantrum doesn’t enter the picture.

While the frauds who compiled the Top 100 Fiction list and I might diverge in our estimations of Lolita, I will agree with our man John Updike when he states “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” There is no denying that the book is phenomenally written, but the repetition of nymphette-this and nymphette-that simply overwhelmed me; I was left with an indelible image of Nabokov sitting there alternately referencing his thesaurus and a collection of kiddie porn for inspiration while hammering this out. I’d have enjoyed this book a thousand times more had it been about turtles, or walnuts, or my mother's first communion, hell, anything else. Nymphettes suck: there is a reason I don’t go trolling for trim at the nearest bus station, who the hell wants to put up with the behavior of a pubescent trollop?

There isn’t a whole hell of a lot that I know, but I do know this; if my choices were either read Lolita again or spend a day crabbing in the arctic, I’d better be prepared to get some frostbite on my beanbag.
(less)

like 94 likes

· see review

Jan 16, 2009

David rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 5q

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.

like 117 likes

· see review

Aug 12, 2011

Ian Graye added it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, read-2011

Between the Covers

This afternoon, I said to my local bookseller (a lovely lady of a similar mature age to me!) that I had just finished “Lolita” and asked if she had ever read it.
She replied firmly, “No…and I’m not going to either. He’s a paedophile.”
A bit taken aback, I enquired further, “Who? The author or the character?”
Fortunately, she replied, “The character.”
For me, this exchange showed how much “Lolita” can still sharply divide opinion, even within love...more

like 45 likes

· see review

Jun 30, 2007

Eli rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: novels

This book scared the living daylights out of me.

As everyone says - its gorgeously written. The language is so rich that it somehow spills over the sentences - there's more to them than you can easily ingest. The writing makes the whole thing a pleasure to read, and in a lot of ways puts Nabakov in control from the start - there isn't a lot of room to imagine motives since Nabakov explains so much. I should point out that were a lesser writer spend any time at all writing in a langua...moreThis book scared the living daylights out of me.

As everyone says - its gorgeously written. The language is so rich that it somehow spills over the sentences - there's more to them than you can easily ingest. The writing makes the whole thing a pleasure to read, and in a lot of ways puts Nabakov in control from the start - there isn't a lot of room to imagine motives since Nabakov explains so much. I should point out that were a lesser writer spend any time at all writing in a language I can't read, I may have been tempted to put the whole thing down, but that here, despite entire passages in French, it never crossed my mind to do anything but read on.

There is a recurring temptation to read this as a love story. Humbert Humbert is lovingly obsessed with Lolita. Since he's the narrator of the story, his passion is the lens through which everything is viewed. But Nabakov allows just enough of the unfiltered (fictional) reality through to make it pretty clear that this is a story about a frightened, terribly abused little hostage and her tormentor. The constant flips between seeing Humbert as unfortunately in love with the wrong person, and him as a monster sucking every bit of life out of his prisoner is what is so frightening. It begs the question - how much of reality could we all reconfigure to fit our obsession, or even our love?

The characters, at least Lolita and Humbert are brilliant and true. Lolita is deeply sympathetic, and at points, so is Humbert. The place of the book is everywhere in motion, and little pinpoints across the country are written about with confidence and clarity. The settings precisely frame the story.

There is enough disturbing erotisism that I felt a little strange reading it in broad public view, but it its certainly not explicit in any traditional sense.

Brilliant, complex and extraordinarily readable, this is a book of such force and depth, that it seemed to me nearly impossible to get the whole picture on a single reading. It is definitely one I will pick up again. (less)

like 58 likes

· see review

Jun 15, 2011

K.D. rated it

Shelves: 1001-core, favorites

Nabokov himself said that this novel was his best. I still have to read the others but I agree when critics say that this is one of the best English novels ever. For me, the reason is the irony of having a very sick theme - pedophilia - but told brilliantly that you would fall in love with the book and you don't readily really know why.

From the famous opening statement: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta:..." up to his closing statements...moreNabokov himself said that this novel was his best. I still have to read the others but I agree when critics say that this is one of the best English novels ever. For me, the reason is the irony of having a very sick theme - pedophilia - but told brilliantly that you would fall in love with the book and you don't readily really know why.

From the famous opening statement: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta:..." up to his closing statements "I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigment, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita", Nabokov filled up the 300+ pps of this book with his captivating narrative. His choice of words is precise and never boring. The rhythm and cadence of his sentences are invigorating which I think is distinctively Nabokov. This as opposed to let's say the short and concise yet picturesque narrative of Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and The Sea. When you read a page of a book by Hemingway or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, even without looking at the book's cover, you would right away know who the author is. This is true for Nabokov, I think.

I am a father of a 14-year old girl and I just could not imagine having a man, especially a middle age one, lusting and going after her when she was still 12 years old. Just that for a plot and it is enough for me to immediately drop the book. According to Wikipedia, at the time of its writing, Nabokov was trying to make a name for himself as a writer in the US. He was born in Russia, stayed and wrote in Germany and France before finally moving to the US. He wrote Lolita very carefully and it took him two years writing and re-writing the book. It is the only one of the few novels that is included almost in all Best Novels Lists: 1001, 501, Time Magazine 100, Newsweek 100, Modern Library 100, etc.

So, I spent the last 4 days reading and appreciating this novel. It is one of the old classics (first published in 1955) that could hardly put me to sleep. It is very stimulating to the brain and engaging: "Gentlemen of the jury..." says Humbert Humbert which is very appropriate since from page 1, you know that you hate him for being a sex maniac and sick, sick pedophile. But along the way, because of Nabokov's eloquence on words, you would understand his point of view: he used to love a young girl who died before they were able to consummate their affair. Thus, though the theme is about a sick-in-the-head man, it is a love story that is told in a brilliant one-of-a-kind prose.

Sana Nabokov brought his PC in heaven and continue writing good novels there! (less)

like 29 likes

· see review

Jul 09, 2011

Paul rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: modern-classic, novels

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 mo...more

like 20 likes

· see review

Oct 04, 2009

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, nabokov

My favorite book in all of literature. When I first encountered this title at the age of nineteen I finally realized that great writers were "doing stuff" besides just telling stories. Sure, in high school there was plenty of dry discussion about symbolism and foreshadowing and even dryer in-class readings of poets like Emily Dickinson and Anne Bradstreet(Ugh!), but at that point it all sounded like "The Yellow Rose of Texas" to me.

As I cannot even begin to give ...moreMy favorite book in all of literature. When I first encountered this title at the age of nineteen I finally realized that great writers were "doing stuff" besides just telling stories. Sure, in high school there was plenty of dry discussion about symbolism and foreshadowing and even dryer in-class readings of poets like Emily Dickinson and Anne Bradstreet(Ugh!), but at that point it all sounded like "The Yellow Rose of Texas" to me.

As I cannot even begin to give this book a straight (or even objective) review, I must run back to the shelter of the random thoughts format...

It seriously pisses me off that less literary-minded folk who are aware of this work always seem to refer to it as "that child molester book."

H.H. is a classic example of the unreliable narrator, but I am constantly amazed at just how inept and bumbling that character unwittingly portrays himself despite his half-truths and gold-plated recollections. Young Delores is in control of the balance of power in that relationship throughout the main narrative. His perversions seem to be of a puritanically circumspect variety as well.

H.H. suffers a mental breakdown at some point in the time-line of his confessions. Before I had always believed that it happened during the second cross-country trip, but after this reading I am now suspicious that it was in fact much earlier.

The opening two paragraphs of this work are damned near perfect in my mind...

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

When you say the author's name in your head do you pronounce it NAH-bah-kov or na-BOK-ov? I ask because I recently stumbled across an interview reprint online in which he railed on the various American butcherings of his name, and then (presumably) whacked the interviewer with a butterfly net a time or two.

(less)

like 35 likes

· see review

Nov 15, 2007

David rated it

· review of another edition

Lolita is a road novel, but its kind of the anti-On The Road (it was published in 1955, two years before Kerouac’s breakout book). Humbert Humbert and Sal Paradise travel some of the same roads, around the same time, but rather than some holy quest through sanctified towns in search of enlightenment and kicks, Humbert’s is a furtive, illicit journey through a bland, tacky, ephemeral, clumsily commercialized landscape. On the other hand, both Sal and Humbert are bohemians of sorts, and both cast ...moreLolita is a road novel, but its kind of the anti-On The Road (it was published in 1955, two years before Kerouac’s breakout book). Humbert Humbert and Sal Paradise travel some of the same roads, around the same time, but rather than some holy quest through sanctified towns in search of enlightenment and kicks, Humbert’s is a furtive, illicit journey through a bland, tacky, ephemeral, clumsily commercialized landscape. On the other hand, both Sal and Humbert are bohemians of sorts, and both cast a jaundiced eye at 50’s conformity and conventionality. In Humbert’s eyes, Dolly suffers as much from being an ordinary American adolescent in a tabloid culture as from being the victim of a pedophile. In his twisted view he’s improving her mind while corrupting her morals. But unlike Sal/Kerouac’s celebration of America’s cities and backroads, Humbert’s is a snobbish, jaundiced, extremely unromantic view of the American landscape and 50’s culture.

Lolita is also a book about the expressive possibilities of the English language. In a trite sense this is true of every novel ever written in English. They are all on some level about what you can do, and can fail to do, with the English language. But English was Nabokov’s second language (at least!), and English itself is more of a theme in this novel than it would be were the novel written by a native speaker. Humbert is something of a pedant, and the reader is dazzled by his exuberant and playful use of the language. I guess it goes to the whole outsider theme: Humbert as a cultured, old world European looking askance at 50’s culture; Humbert the nonnative speaker become hyperliterate in his second language; Humbert the pedophile with a more meta understanding of the taboo against sex with children than people who’ve simply internalized it. It’s in the nature of taboos that one refrains from reflecting on them.

And that’s the genuinely disturbing thing about this novel: you willingly spend 300 pages inside the head of a charming psychopath for whom the taboo against sex with children is just an arbitrary social proscription (Humbert briefly recounts historical examples in which the proscription did not exist, and remarks upon the arbitrariness of the various statutory definitions of where the line is drawn). Humbert is repulsive, but you can’t feel superior to him because he’s smarter and more self-aware than you are. Without at all condoning his acts, you begin to see things his way, even though you never really lose sight of Humbert’s massive blind spot: the inability to see that sex with a child violates a sacred trust—that adults will treat children as ends rather than means—and forces the child to experience a reality they are not yet emotionally equipped for. In some ways I suppose Humbert is a precursor to Hannibal Lecter, although while Lecter arguably does more despicable things—kills people and eats them—Humbert is a far more disturbing character.
(less)

like 29 likes

· see review

Jul 31, 2007

Mary Ellen rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: EVERYONE

I recently got into an argument with a friend about Lolita. I contend that it's one of the most beautiful books ever written, and that it's twice as amazing because Nabakov wrote it in English (which is his second or third language).

She contended that it was about a child molestor and was inexcusable.

I argued that it was more about chronicling a slightly off-kilter man's descent into wretched madness and total loathsomeness. A portrait of a child molestor, not necessaril...more

like 33 likes

· see review

Jun 19, 2011

Mariel rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Humbert, dressed in cobras

Recommended to Mariel by: This is the dream of Humbert and Humbert

Shelves: babywecouldbefamous, sovietkitsch

I'm rereading for the group!

----
Lolita is my wallowing in the recesses of another's mind. This book is a snake mind pit.

It also broke my heart for the realization that knowing other people can be completely and totally foriegn. It is incredibly depressing to me how many people I've known (all female) who took Humbert's word about anything Lolita felt. Nabokov's genius was also in the telling between the lines. Those beats in spaces, the silences. How could the...more

like 22 likes

· see review

May 21, 2008

The Scarlet Pervygirl rated it

· review of another edition

This is not a book about a pedophile: it is a book about everything modern adult women fear to be true about adult men; and the book about the most terrible fears I've ever had being true in the most terrible ways possible is also the most beautiful book I've ever read.

like 13 likes

· see review

Mar 14, 2008

April rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A very intense read, this book required nearly all of my attention. I don't know what I was expecting; I had already seen the film, and I wanted to make a comparison between it and the book and to see just how much of the film was sanitized for the '60s audience. The author got to write the screenplay, so it's no surprise that the movie stays true to the book ... that is, mostly true to the book. Aside from a few minor scenes and characters the one glaring difference between the two is the absol...more

like 30 likes

· see review

Sep 11, 2007

Harajyuku rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: all-timefavorites

The other day I finished reading Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita." Thank God. It was wonderful. I compare the experience to cutting through black briars with roses growing and only a dull wooden machete in hand. "Lolita" was solid and boring, a monstrously obese... thing that danced like light through meadows of bumblebess and sharp grass and seven types of silky-soft wheat. I could not even believe that its toes could leave the ground. I still cannot. It was like a cherubim, only...moreThe other day I finished reading Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita." Thank God. It was wonderful. I compare the experience to cutting through black briars with roses growing and only a dull wooden machete in hand. "Lolita" was solid and boring, a monstrously obese... thing that danced like light through meadows of bumblebess and sharp grass and seven types of silky-soft wheat. I could not even believe that its toes could leave the ground. I still cannot. It was like a cherubim, only uglier; it was a pain to taste and a joy to swallow and I am both sorry and proud that it is over and that I have been the one to kill it. Reading Nabokov is healthy for me – he opens my vocabulary, reminds me of words I had forgotten and left rotting, endows me with an articulate voice so starkly unlike my own cloudy, muddled one. He writes in a voice unnatural to most minds but easily tangible, and thus easily mutated and adopted by others. But I think that, in the end, it was Humbert Humbert that I loved best. I must be his only sympathizer in all the world – most do not trouble themselves with the affairs of monsters, but I felt myself strangely affected by him. Usually I have no tolerance for men throwing themselves so eagerly away and calmly walking the path to destruction, but I liked him – in all his evil and wretchedness. Even my heart bled for him, poor doomed beast that he was. The worst was that I could not even bring myself to hate Lolita herself – the vapid, disgusting victim, that shallow nymphet with only the aery beauty to her and nothing more, everything else sucked into the abyss and leaving nothing. Such a refreshing book, as well - blissfully absent of obnixous symbolism and metaphors. Sometimes one just wants a love story to be a goddamned love story, never mind Humbert being Old Europe and Dolores Haze suburban America. Screw analysis - I enjoyed it, even though it was a bitch to hack away at. I enjoyed it, because the blood I bled on those thorns was real and my own, all my own, and it's been such a time since last I could care so much for a character. Makes you wonder what I've been reading lately, no?(less)

like 19 likes

· see review

Feb 05, 2009

Manny rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, older-men-younger-women

I remember seeing an interview with Nabokov, where he was asked what long-term effect he thought Lolita had had. I suppose the interviewer was looking for some comment on the liberalization of censorship laws, or something like that. Nabokov didn't want to play - as you can see in Look at the Harlequins, he was pretty tired of these questions. So he said well, as far as he could make out, there had only been one effect. Mothers of young girls named Dolores no longer affectionately called them Lo...moreI remember seeing an interview with Nabokov, where he was asked what long-term effect he thought Lolita had had. I suppose the interviewer was looking for some comment on the liberalization of censorship laws, or something like that. Nabokov didn't want to play - as you can see in Look at the Harlequins, he was pretty tired of these questions. So he said well, as far as he could make out, there had only been one effect. Mothers of young girls named Dolores no longer affectionately called them Lolita.

I loved this reply for its magnificent unhelpfulness. In a very narrow sense, Nabokov was surely right. I challenge anyone to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Lolita has had any effect over and above the one he named. And in principle I also approve of Nabokov's attitude towards critics, and the way he loved teasing them. Pale Fire is another long joke at the critics' expense (how many other books are there where most of the action takes place in the footnotes?), and, like John Shade, he burned his rough drafts to make sure that posterity had as little material as possible to work with.

But, if one wants to go against Nabokov's stated wishes and indulge in a small amount of speculation, it does seem to me that Lolita has had a substantial effect in terms of popularizing the narrative technique where a character is initially presented in sympathetic terms, and then gradually revealed as a monster. Two examples that immediately spring to mind are Martin Amis and Ruth Rendell. In Lolita, Nabokov cunningly introduces Humbert as a rather engaging personality, and fabricates all sorts of extenuating circumstances. To start off with, there's the tragic story of his childhood romance with poor Annabel Leigh. Then Lo is far from innocent, and, as Humbert points out, she seduces him. But the fact remains that, whatever excuses you may come up with, it's just wrong for an adult male to have sex with a twelve year old girl. After a while Humbert, and the reader, is forced to admit that he has turned her into a whore who fellates him for small change, and then cries herself to sleep every night. You feel disgusted with yourself for ever being dumb enough to fall for this slick con artist.

Hopefully, the controversial opinions I've just expressed won't result in some overzealous Iranian cleric putting a fatwa on me - one of the first things the Ayatollah Khomeini did on gaining power was to lower the age of consent to 9, on the grounds that the Prophet's youngest wife was that age when she married him. You see how dangerous this speculative analysis can be?

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

While making dinner (turkey fajitas), I thought about the question Paul raised, whether we can believe what Humbert is telling us. I was wondering what evidence I could present to support my point of view, which is that he only distorts the truth and omits things, rather than simply lying outright.

I would say that my basic argument is that Humbert isn't really writing for us, he's writing for himself, so any lies he tells are going to be the kind of lies one tells to oneself, rather than those one tells to other people. It's true that people do sometimes plain flat-out lie to themselves. But Humbert is a smart, educated guy who thinks a lot, and he doesn't seem delusional; I find it plausible that he is more telling the story his way, and working hard to find an interpretation that makes his actions pardonable. But this involves greater and greater distortion of the facts, and in the end there are things he can no longer explain away. It hits so hard because he's previously done a good job of making the reader identify with him; the reader almost feels that he has been lying to himself.

I came up with a couple more books to which I'd had similar reactions. One is Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", where it turns out that the murderer is the person narrating the story. I remember a friend saying that nothing had ever creeped him out quite as badly: he felt for a second that he, himself, was the murderer! Less obviously, there's Sartre's "L'Age de Raison". Mathieu doesn't seem like such a bad guy, even though he's a bit of a dope, and nothing he does really comes across as particularly evil. Yet, somewhere near the end, you're forced to admit that he is in fact a person who will steal a substantial amount of money from a friend in order to pay for his mistress's abortion. You wonder why you previously felt sympathetic.

A final thought I had while preparing dinner. One of the very scariest things about Lolita is that Humbert, in a real sense, loves Lo. However, this results in him raping her and turning her into a child prostitute. A couple of years ago, I watched the movie "Mysterious Skin", which takes the same theme even further: it's one of the most disquieting films I've ever seen. Has anyone else come across it? Would be interested to get reactions.(less)

like 43 likes

· see review

Oct 05, 2011

Carlo rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, to-be-read-again, language, american-literature, literary-fiction

What's great about Nabokov's Lolita is that it tells you something about yourself; What's weird about it is that right after reading it, you want to read it again since you know that you are not the same person anymore. It is so sincere that its truth comes as a slap in the face, and I'm certain that it will be read as long as people are around.

Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert, a European man obsessed with certain young teenage girls, whom he sees as having the aura of adult w...more

like 11 likes

· see review

Jul 09, 2011

Paul rated it

· review of another edition

This is a review of The Annotated Lolita. My review of Lolita itself is here

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/675...

***

Reading Lolita with this Malaysian jungle of annotations hanging over every paragraph is slow going, but reading Lolita without any explanation of the many (too many, my dear Vladimir) French sentences, the trillion allusions to other books and poems, the zillion links to Vlad's other novels, is to wade through a fog of half-comprehension. W...more

like 8 likes

· see review

Sep 22, 2007

A.C. rated it

I bought this book over a year ago along with Middlesex and Invisible Man. I enjoyed both of those books immensely, but found myself struggling with Lolita. The fact that I could not particularly explain why I had trouble with this book pained me for a year. I read other books, but I always found myself, in a manner similar to Humbert, coming back to Lolita.

Now, that I have come back to it, I have to say that I'm not completely sure why I was so anxious. Much like Dolores's feelings...moreI bought this book over a year ago along with Middlesex and Invisible Man. I enjoyed both of those books immensely, but found myself struggling with Lolita. The fact that I could not particularly explain why I had trouble with this book pained me for a year. I read other books, but I always found myself, in a manner similar to Humbert, coming back to Lolita.

Now, that I have come back to it, I have to say that I'm not completely sure why I was so anxious. Much like Dolores's feelings towards her older paramour, I felt antipathy and disinterest towards the story.

To clear the air first, this is one of the best technical pieces of writing that I've ever read. Ever. The language is immensely complex and elegant. Nabokov is a masterful writer. The descriptions of situations are lush and illustrative. The problem with this is the fact that Nabokov spends too much time showing off with vocabulary instead of telling a compelling story.

Now, the story is not completely without merits. I thought that Humbert was a compelling character, one who was sincere in his emotions although his preferences were wrong. The problem was the fact that his obsession was melodramatic, for lack of a better word. This flair for the excessive became clear in the long paragraphs of beautifully worded descriptions of the EXACT SAME THING. Over and over, Humbert would describe something seven, eight, nine different ways. After a while, I started asking myself is Nabokov telling a story or does he like hearing himself talk? In my opinion, it was the latter, and this made the story drag on.

In addition, I found both Lolita and Humbert to be fairly one-dimensional characters. They both lacked a depth that people of their intellect should have. She acted like a teenage girl. He acted like a perverted pedophile. I'm not sure where the revolution is in that.

Seeing as I've pretty much panned a large section of the book, there has to be a reason that I gave it a three star rating instead of a 1 or 2. This is so for a few reasons. When Nabokov wasn't reveling in his intelligence, the writing was sharp, witty, and clever. I didn't say he was a bad writer; I said he overwrote. Secondly, the book was a good piece of interpretive fiction. You can lay all sorts of contexts over the book, and they most likely will work. I personally started thinking about reading lolita in tehran. While I haven't seen the movie, the book, as it went along, the choice of the book for that context made a lot more sense. It was a very mentally stimulating book, which is something that critics reading the book probably love about it. The last part is Humbert Humbert. I really enjoyed his obsession.

In the end, I think that if Nabokov chilled out with some of the description, this book would have been a five star for me. Even with that flaw, I can see the pure talent on display in this book and want to read another one of his books to see if he can bring his descriptive skills up to his narrative skills.(less)

like 15 likes

· see review

Jun 30, 2009

Richard rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Adults without children

Shelves: mytopfive

I made the mistake of reading Lolita while I was writing my first novel. I promptly decided I was wasting my time. The next morning, I punished myself by typing “I am not Vladimir Nabokov” 100 times with my forehead. I got the message around line 57, and went out to buy a new keyboard.

(Impact rating: 10 out of 10)

(Ranked #1 in my all-time Top-10.)

like 26 likes

· see review

May 06, 2011

Amanda rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: book-club-made-me-do-it

In a word: unsettling. Lolita is beautifully written, full of lyrical prose and clever word play, and I commend Nabokov for the obvious skill and talent it took to write a novel in a language other than his native Russian. Having said all of that, no matter how beautiful, how inventive, how genius: I don't want to read about a pedophile, especially from the perspective of a pedophile. There's not a whole lot that I shy away from while reading (all sins are welcome here, for the sake of ente...moreIn a word: unsettling. Lolita is beautifully written, full of lyrical prose and clever word play, and I commend Nabokov for the obvious skill and talent it took to write a novel in a language other than his native Russian. Having said all of that, no matter how beautiful, how inventive, how genius: I don't want to read about a pedophile, especially from the perspective of a pedophile. There's not a whole lot that I shy away from while reading (all sins are welcome here, for the sake of entertainment), but a pedophile who kidnaps the object of his affection and repeatedly rapes her during a cross country journey just isn't my bag, baby.

What makes the novel particularly terrifying is Humbert Humbert. To the outside world, he is a suave, sophisticated intellectual with movie star good looks--he's decidedly not someone one would look at and think, "Hmm . . . I bet he gets his jollies from playgrounds and little girls." I think many of us expect a pedophile's tendencies to somehow manifest themselves in the physical appearance: we expect the old man with a nervous twitch and a wanky eye (or the pop star with a high pitched giggle and a freakin' Ferris wheel on his property), but not someone who appears as civilized as Humbert. Admittedly, this is a stroke of genius on Nabokov's part as there are probably far more Humberts in this world who slip under the radar than we would like to admit. Even worse, Humbert seems to displace the blame on the girls themselves. Oh, sure, there is the occasional reference to himself as a beast or an ape and he comes to mourn Lolita's lost childhood at the hands of his unwholesome desires, but far more often there's the view of the nymphettes as demonic--something otherworldly, tempting little femme fatales in boy shorts with scraped knees and poor Humbert is powerless against their siren song. In addition, he seems to justify or rationalize what he does because he's an intellectual with the capacity to appreciate the aesthetics and sublime pleasures of the young (he often compares himself to poets and artists who loved their young muses, as though this somehow justifies his actions). The man is sick and, while I think he knows it, he doesn't know how to handle it.

To all of this, I can only offer a highly intellectual "blech" or "yuck" and move on as quickly as possible to the next book.(less)

like 9 likes

· see review

Dec 19, 2007

Jessica Baxter rated it

· review of another edition

so my boyfriend gets this great film magazine called "little white lies" and each movie they review gets three ratings- one for how much they anticipated it, one for how much they enjoyed watching it, and one for how much staying power it had. i wish we did that with these books, because five stars just doesn't cut it.
anyway, i'd heard so many crazily good things about this book, and then i started reading it and was immediately pissed off. i didn't like the style, i was bored,...moreso my boyfriend gets this great film magazine called "little white lies" and each movie they review gets three ratings- one for how much they anticipated it, one for how much they enjoyed watching it, and one for how much staying power it had. i wish we did that with these books, because five stars just doesn't cut it.
anyway, i'd heard so many crazily good things about this book, and then i started reading it and was immediately pissed off. i didn't like the style, i was bored, and quite frankly i was left looking around the subway thinking "am i the ONLY one who thinks humbert is just a pedophiliac rapist?" the quotation on the cover of my edition is: "the only convincing love story of our time" (vanity fair). i was so appalled by that-- this is love? abuse, coercion, arrogance, lies, self-pity? i mean, yeah, i hear you out there saying, "uh, duh..." but i just disagree. if this is truly the most convincing love story of our time, then i'm the only person who loves for sweetness, for trust, for laughing and shared moments and respect. and i just couldn't believe that.
but i kept reading. and slowly, around page 250, i started to understand that humbert (and of course nabokov) were one step ahead of me. this is what made me stop in my tracks, what literally took my breath away:
"i loved you. i was a pentapod monster, but i loved you. i was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais! and there were times when i knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. lolita girl, brave dolly schiller."
and the next paragraph goes on to describe him naked in bed with her, after just raping her (i will always refuse to call it anything but rape, even after that quotation), and he starts to feel complete shame and despair and he wants to erase what he's done, and before he can say anything to her he gets aroused again and "'oh, no,' lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure--all would be shattered."
he gets that he's sick. he gets that its a sickness. and i'm so, so relieved, because for 250 pages i didn't think he did.
so:
anticipation: 4
enjoyment: 2 1/2
staying power: 5(less)

like 9 likes

· see review

Jul 17, 2007

John Ryan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: classicliterature

In brief, this is the greatest book I have read of the 20th century (it's too hard for me to compare it to pre-20th century literature). I say this because it combines a full array of successful techniques and features that I haven't seen combined in other work; but moreover, in doing so it transcends itself and its subject matter to become true art.

[Possible plot-spoiling follows...]

The most obvious misconception about the book is that it is lewd. Indeed, Nabokov's after...moreIn brief, this is the greatest book I have read of the 20th century (it's too hard for me to compare it to pre-20th century literature). I say this because it combines a full array of successful techniques and features that I haven't seen combined in other work; but moreover, in doing so it transcends itself and its subject matter to become true art.

[Possible plot-spoiling follows...]

The most obvious misconception about the book is that it is lewd. Indeed, Nabokov's afterword dismisses this entirely (and actually reading the book has the same effect) - he is well aware of the formulaic requirements/demands of pornography. There is no crudeness or prurience in the book.

Another issue is the nature of Humbert. Without doubt he is wretched, selfish and cruel - it doesn't take much quotation-digging to establish that. But at the same time it seems clear to me that he does love Lolita, with the ironically childish purity of true love (refer to the passage on his last meeting with her, and his plaintive final beseeching for nothing more than companionship for the rest of his life. This is Humbert laid bare, away from the crowing tone of his with-Lolita days, where the stripping away of his one love [she surpasses Annabel - note the lack of Annabel reminiscences in the second half of the text] has shown him that away from the venereal desires burning in him, there was another passion for Lolita, one which renders life elsewhere meaningless.). He displays his grotesque failings, and indeed evils, as the result of his sexual desire, a not uncommon event for people in general.

I haven't come across this reading of Humbert from other sources, but it seems that way to me. It's a result, I'd say, of the remarkably sympathetic way that Humbert can come across, despite the brutality of (essentially) the slave-girl ownership and psychological domination of his charge. Making a monster human was a great accomplishment for the author.

There are two tremendously moving parts of the book. The final scene of Humbert and Dolly is agonising reading as he dejectedly comes to terms with his love's final rejection of him. More concise, and more horrific, is the end of Book 1 (I paraphrase from memory):

"Why can't I talk to my mother if I want to?"
"Because your mother is dead."

...and the dry, emotionless paragraph afterwards, finishing with the lines that embody the book: "She had nowhere else to go."(less)

like 10 likes

· see review

Jul 09, 2007

Jason Pettus rated it

· review of another edition

I never got around to reading the classic Lolita until my mid-thirties, and I'm glad it took so long, because it let me appreciate the novel more for what it actually is -- not just a salacious tale of underage love (although it's that too), but also a darkly funny look at the then-new world of the American highway, and of all the soulless look-alike businesses found along all of its exit ramps. In the original story, our hopeless anti-hero Humbert Humbert is more of a caricature than a real per...more

like 11 likes

· see review

Jul 11, 2011

Chiara Pagliochini rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: sfuggenti-a-classificazione

Inizierò col dire che questo libro s’è tenuto lontano dallo scandalizzarmi. Più che altro mi ha intristito. Man mano che procedevo con la lettura, ho appuntato degli aggettivi sulla quarta di copertina, che ora elenco nell’ordine: seducente, onirico, triste, allucinatorio, delirante.
Certo, sono sicura che nel ’55, quando uscì a Parigi, Lolita fu un clamoroso polverone. Oggi, a distanza di anni, non può non toccare comunque le nostre fibre morali. Ammesso che la letteratura debba essere mor...moreInizierò col dire che questo libro s’è tenuto lontano dallo scandalizzarmi. Più che altro mi ha intristito. Man mano che procedevo con la lettura, ho appuntato degli aggettivi sulla quarta di copertina, che ora elenco nell’ordine: seducente, onirico, triste, allucinatorio, delirante.
Certo, sono sicura che nel ’55, quando uscì a Parigi, Lolita fu un clamoroso polverone. Oggi, a distanza di anni, non può non toccare comunque le nostre fibre morali. Ammesso che la letteratura debba essere morale, assunto di cui dubito.
Su perversioni, pervertiti, maniaci, vittime e carnefici profusioni di recensioni sono state scritte. Humbert Humbert quarantenne intellettuale nevrotico ossessionato dalle “ninfette”, ragazzine (bambine?) in cui rivede il suo primo amore, Annabel. Lolita, ninfetta anomala, poco ingenua e vagamente complice, in perenne conflitto con la madre, ben disposta a lasciarsi cadere tra le braccia di lui.
Tenendo presenti questi dati, potremmo addentrarci su considerazioni del tipo “ma Humbert ama Lolita?”, “ma Lolita quanto è innocente e da compatire?”, “ma che diritto aveva Humbert di?” etc etc. A me tali discussioni non interessano molto. Leggendo questo romanzo mi sono trovata a riflettere su un conflitto che anima, suppongo, ognuno di noi: l’opposizione tra realtà e fantasia. Ho visto Humbert come l’uomo che trasforma le proprie fantasie in realtà, ma quando lo fa, quando la sua fantasia si fa carne, allora ecco che tutto diventa aberrante, non perché Humbert è un adulto e Lolita una bimba, ma perché la realtà consuma le nostre fantasie, che prima godevano di una potenzialità infinita ed ora non sono che mera replica mal recitata. Ero estremamente entusiasta fino al primo approccio fisico tra i due protagonisti, pur nella sua amoralità e tutto il pacchetto. Quello che mi ha intristito è stato il seguito: vedere Humbert dar sfogo a tutte le proprie fantasie, trovandole ogni giorno più inadeguate, aumentare il ritmo/la frequenza/l’intensità dei rapporti, vedere Lolita ingrigire, il tutto diventare meccanico e pauroso.
È difficile, con somma onestà, provare molta compassione per Lolita, ma non perché non la meriti. Non si può provare compassione per Lolita perché sono gli occhi di Humbert che non la provano: si prova paura di Lolita, si prova paura per Lolita, si prova rabbia nei confronti di Lolita, la sia ama, la si vuole capire e non si riesce. Se questo libro è maestoso, non lo è per la scabrosità dei temi trattati, quanto per il modo in cui essi vengono trattati: il perfetto annientarsi dell’autore nel narratore, il trascinare i lettori alla completa identificazione con il personaggio. Ed ecco spiegati i miei aggettivi iniziali: seducente perché siamo anche noi sedotti da Lolita, onirico perché la realizzazione della fantasia di Humbert è qualcosa di troppo bello per essere vero, triste perché triste e frustrato è Humbert nel cercare di tenere allegra e disponibile la sua pupilla, allucinatorio e delirante nella parte finale, in cui chiaramente il protagonista non è più in sé, tanto che ci si aspetta che egli commenta qualsiasi gesto, da un momento all’altro, senza il minimo preavviso, perché nella sua prosa non c’è più nulla di lucido. Mirabilmente scritto, mirabilmente, proprio per la perfezione dell’obiettivo, oltre che per la sapienza linguistica e il genio nelle associazioni (confesso che temo di non aver colto la maggior parte dei sottointesi o che molti giochi di parole si perdano un po’ nella traduzione italiana; leggerlo in inglese sarebbe auspicabile, se avessi una padronanza linguistica sufficiente alla sfida).
Quello che di Lolita mi ha lasciata un po’ straniata è il finale. Chiuso il volume, ho pensato, e allora? Ho cominciato a congetturare qualcosa di più di quello che c’era scritto, a cercare nell’assassinio finale uno scontro del doppio con se stesso et similaria. Ma nessuna fonte o interpretazione finora consultata mi invitano a sperare che esista qualcosa di più del nudo fatto. Eppure quelle scene mi sono parse così assurde che la mia testa si rifiuta di credere che si siano svolte nel modo in cui il nostro folle Humbert le racconta. Ma d’altronde lui è un nevrotico da cui non possiamo aspettarci la completa verità, come non ce la aspettiamo da Zeno Cosini e i suoi parenti.
Al che ho concluso che doveva essere “annebbiamento da sede d’esame” (giacché nel terminare la lettura ero in coda per l’orale di filologia germanica). Sono ancora un po’ tocca e arrabbiata e meravigliata e ammirata e anelante, come sull’orlo di un precipizio che vedo soltanto io.

(less)

like 9 likes

· see review

Oct 03, 2008

Melissa rated it

· review of another edition

I feel like a mental midget in trying to explain my feelings about this book. I struggle to understand why it is considered such a classic piece of literature. Am I jaded by my own time? Have I heard too often the world "lolita" used in modern contexts to refer to young girls who are attractive to adult men who should know better? I had to delve into some literary criticism in order to help me understand, and I think what Lolita tries to do is tell a disguting story about a disgusting ...more

like 37 likes

· see review

view all 13 comments

Aubrey Tate Remember, to all the intentional haters commenting on this review, that it all boils down to likes and dislikes. There is nothing right or wrong about...more
updated 01 lug. 20:07

Meredith O'Donnell It is ironic to me how people often cry "IGNORANCE!" when presented with a viewpoint that differs from their own--After all, a close-minded ...more
01 ago. 08:48

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 10927 10928 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Lolita	11	154	01 feb. 17:12
pedophilia	128	815	01 feb. 09:15
Group #1 Lolita: Lolita Part 1	2	4	18 dic. 12:10
Brit Lit: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov	9	6	14 dic. 08:53
Group #1 Lolita: Lolita Part 1	2	4	11 dic. 13:11
Group #1 Lolita: due dates	1	4	04 dic. 13:47

combine
Other Editions (186)

More editions...

Videos About This Book

Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" part 1 of 2

8 comments

Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" part 2 of 2

Add a comment

Genres

Classics

2249 users

Literature

432 users

Novels

234 users

Cultural > Russia

212 users

Book Club

142 users

Romance

110 users

Literature > American

81 users

Adult

82 users

Literature > Russian Literature

71 users

Adult Fiction

67 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

Under the Volcano
by Malcolm Lowry
Under the Net
by Iris Murdoch
Appointment in Samarra
by John O'Hara
The Adventures of Augie March
by Saul Bellow
Loving
by Henry Green

About Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery and had an interest in chess problems.

Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intricate wordplay and descriptiv...more

More about Vladimir Nabokov...

Books by Vladimir Nabokov

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About Lolita

63 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Lolita

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.” — 1,478 people liked it

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.” — 465 people liked it

More quotes…

Groups That Shelved Lolita

Boxall's 1001 Books You ...

11001 members

last activity 2 hours, 36 min ago

shelf: read

The Next Best Book Club

8324 members

last activity 1 minute ago

shelf: read

title link	preview: Lolita
avg rating	preview: Lolita Goodreads rating: 3.78 (203044 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18133.Lolita?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320508300m/18133.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18133.Lolita?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov[/url]

Lolita

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website