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A review by birdykinsreads
Being Lolita: A Memoir by Alisson Wood
challenging
4.0
I decided to read this when I was in the mood to be ✨devastated✨ and it worked. A heartbreaking account of Alisson Wood’s abusive relationship with her high school teacher. It’s exactly what you probably imagine it to be—My Dark Vanessa but painfully real.
What surprised me about this book was how much time was spent interrogating her experience actually reading the book Lolita over the years and how her view of it changed over time, now as a literature professor she teaches it herself. I really loved that part of it—how a book comes into your life at a certain time and how you grow and change with it, sometimes seeing it in a whole new light. I love that she ended up realizing how her teacher mishandled that book from the jump, seeing in it only what he wanted to. Not only was he a gross predator but also, in the end a shitty teacher too, completely misreading the text for his own means.
Anyway, a difficult and engaging memoir that I read in one day. Made me want to reread Lolita for myself and see how my perceptions of it have changed.
What surprised me about this book was how much time was spent interrogating her experience actually reading the book Lolita over the years and how her view of it changed over time, now as a literature professor she teaches it herself. I really loved that part of it—how a book comes into your life at a certain time and how you grow and change with it, sometimes seeing it in a whole new light. I love that she ended up realizing how her teacher mishandled that book from the jump, seeing in it only what he wanted to. Not only was he a gross predator but also, in the end a shitty teacher too, completely misreading the text for his own means.
Anyway, a difficult and engaging memoir that I read in one day. Made me want to reread Lolita for myself and see how my perceptions of it have changed.