Lolita

This was one of the most demanding books I've read this year, and I honestly had to sleep over how to rate it.
On the one hand, Nabokov's style and language are brilliantly impressive. On the other hand, the narrative voice and the story as such are horrid, and increasingly so as the book develops, both of which is almost too convincing for comfort.
Humbert Humbert is, frankly, a villain who would like to fashion himself as a victim, variably that of circumstance, and of Lolita. The whole book is a defense plea on his part, swaying between the slavery to his cruel mistress, the woman-child, and his unconvincing regret of ruining the child-woman. His basic assumption seems to be the cliche of sex-offender-defenses: "She wanted it, or else she wouldn't have been that lascivious around me all the time." Humbert attributes Lolita with a lot more adult sense and comprehension than anyone could expect of a child of twelve (at the beginning) to allow himself to be the victim of her seduction, and the lover treated cruelly and unfairly when he only wishes Lolita to be happy with him. There could, of course, never have been informed consent, or a love between equals here. Humbert tries to frighten the child into secrecy and acceptance after having made himself the only attachment figure available.
I felt angry most of the time reading his confessions, never knowing whether the narrator was actually fooling himself or just putting up a show to fool the reader about his view of the affair.
It is the most amazing thing that Lolita manages to find her way to a more or less normal and happy life once she has escaped from Humbert and her rescuer likewise. And it is Humbert's only redeeming quality that he does not ruin this small patch of normality for her.

It is absolutely frightening and amazing at the same time to see how very convincing Nabokov developed Humbert's written confession. This book cannot fail to draw strong emotions from the reader, and it would possibly have been unbearable to read if one had had to see Lolita during her ordeal without the filter of Humbert's point of view.

Lolita is the highly controversial novel of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with twelve year-old Dolores Haze. Of whom he becomes a step father as well as being sexually involved. Considered one of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, Lolita is known not just for the disturbing nature but for the unreliable narration and sophisticated writing style.

Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece, Lolita, is one of those books that are worth reading even if it makes you very uncomfortable. The protagonist is the villain who tries so hard to gain the readers sympathy through his sincerity and melancholy. But as the story progress you can even see that he has lost of sympathy for himself and starts referring to himself as maniac who deprived Dolores of her childhood. The novel provides a remarkable perspective into the mind of a man you just want to hate and I will admit it can be a little exciting to watch him go through hell. Nabokov writes a hated character in the hope to knock him around and give him some humility and the reader is left wondering if he will learn from his mistakes.

This has often been described as an erotic novel, even the Great Soviet Encyclopedia called Lolita “an experiment in combining an erotic novel with an instructive novel of manners”. Personally I think of this book as a satirical tragedy with elements of eroticism and remorse. The narrator spends a fair chunk of the book begging the reader to understand that he is not proud of his actions and he is often stricken with guilt at the awareness of robbing Lolita of her childhood. But there is a case to be made at the fact that this is just an exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child but this can be problematic and not something I wish to go into great deal about.

The novel as a whole is a very one sided argument, we know how Humbert feels about the entire situation; we hear this to a very sickening degree. He has remorse but his obsession keeps him from ever changing, but one has to wonder what was really going through the mind of Dolores. I have to wonder how she sees the situation or even what she was thinking or feeling throughout the novel. We, as readers, can only surmise since we are forced to absorb Humbert’s feelings.

It is interesting to point out just how two dimensional all the characters are; all except himself and Lolita, which he goes into great detail. It reminds me of life; people tend to describe each other in a two dimensional manner unless we are obsessed with or interested in the person. This technique of writing really added to the realistic feeling of this book.

Lolita was a really awkward and sickening novel to read, there aren’t many books out there that have made me sick to my stomach. Lolita pulls off that feeling that horror novels try to achieve yet often get wrong – that feeling of uneasiness for the reader. This is my second read of this novel, so I knew what to expect and I was able to look past the controversial elements and focus on what this book can offer to the literary world.

Apart from the elements of oppression and an authority figure trying to assert their dominance this book explores tragicomedy, unreliable narration, irony and because Vladimir Nabokov is a Russian it could be a metaphor for totalitarianism. There are many themes you can explore within the novel but the one that will stick in most people’s minds is the lasting damage created by child sexual abuse.

Interestingly enough Vladimir Nabokov is a surrealist often linked to Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Kafka which make you wonder about some of the elements of this book even more. With a love of intricate word play and synesthetic detail Lolita turns into a wry observation of western culture. The novel is full of cleaver word play, double entendres, multilingual puns and in the end when you boil done to why people love it, it is just a beautifully written novel.

You may not enjoy reading this book but you might enjoy having read it. I have to admit that I enjoyed this book more the second time around; there is great beauty to be found in this book and while content makes this book difficult to get through it is well worth the effort. I remember one of my first blog posts on literature was called “What Would You Read in an Introduction to Fiction Course” where I listed the books I’d include if I was to create an introduction to Fiction course and Lolita was one of my choices. Having now reread this book, it just validates my choice even more, there is so much to explore in this book that it has been put back on my list of books to reread.

This review originally appeared on my blog; literary-exploration.com/2013/03/30/book-of-the-month-lolita/