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A review by leonard_gaya
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
4.0
Probably everyone recalls that iconic movie poster with a blond teenager peering above her heart-shaped sunglasses, a red lollipop on the tip of her tongue. This picture is directly inspired by a line in Nabokov’s novel, where middle-aged Humbert-Humbert sees “his Lolita” for the very first time. What follows is a tender, sad, and seemingly chaste love story between a man in his forties and (in his own words) a nymphette.
Lolita is a novel in the form of a confession. It is unclear throughout H.H’s story precisely what crime he has been convicted with. Paedophilia with Lolita? Paedophilia with another girl? The murder of his wife (Lolita’s mother)? The murder of the mysterious Clare Quilty? The narrator leaves clues, but the suspense remains. What troubles him the most are not the charges against him but the guilt stemming from his past desire, love, lust, and jealousy towards his stepdaughter. This feeling of inner conflict tints almost everything in this book.
Lolita is also a great road-novel, a painting of the American landscape and (not without some sarcasm) of the American way of life, as depicted by a foreigner who drops a French line now and then. This aspect of Nabokov’s novel is perhaps the most delicate and personal. And Humbert’s passion for Lolita’s young body is probably a metaphor of the love of an old European for a rolling young country.
It is well known that, despite his scandalous subject (the [a:Marquis de Sade|2885224|Marquis de Sade|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1388547600p2/2885224.jpg] would have produced an altogether different treatment of it), Lolita is in no way an erotic novel — nor is Sacher-Masoch’s [b:Venus in Furs|427354|Venus in Furs|Leopold von Sacher-Masoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542732039l/427354._SY75_.jpg|2469460] a book about kinky sex. It is the novel of an aesthete, fascinated by untouched beauty, by virgin landscapes, and by a language (English) for him to reveal in its unique musicality.
Lolita is a novel in the form of a confession. It is unclear throughout H.H’s story precisely what crime he has been convicted with. Paedophilia with Lolita? Paedophilia with another girl? The murder of his wife (Lolita’s mother)? The murder of the mysterious Clare Quilty? The narrator leaves clues, but the suspense remains. What troubles him the most are not the charges against him but the guilt stemming from his past desire, love, lust, and jealousy towards his stepdaughter. This feeling of inner conflict tints almost everything in this book.
Lolita is also a great road-novel, a painting of the American landscape and (not without some sarcasm) of the American way of life, as depicted by a foreigner who drops a French line now and then. This aspect of Nabokov’s novel is perhaps the most delicate and personal. And Humbert’s passion for Lolita’s young body is probably a metaphor of the love of an old European for a rolling young country.
It is well known that, despite his scandalous subject (the [a:Marquis de Sade|2885224|Marquis de Sade|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1388547600p2/2885224.jpg] would have produced an altogether different treatment of it), Lolita is in no way an erotic novel — nor is Sacher-Masoch’s [b:Venus in Furs|427354|Venus in Furs|Leopold von Sacher-Masoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542732039l/427354._SY75_.jpg|2469460] a book about kinky sex. It is the novel of an aesthete, fascinated by untouched beauty, by virgin landscapes, and by a language (English) for him to reveal in its unique musicality.