Book Review: Lolita is a beautifully written novel about the ugliest of subjects. Vladimir Nabokov dares to go where few have, and makes us think thoughts we don't want to consider while our emotions are churning. Even as we see Lolita's unhappiness and Humbert's coercion, Nabokov charms us, while breaking taboos and forcing us outside our comfortable and cultural confines. No comfort zones here. Humbert regrets his actions even while ecstatically exulting in them, and rarely thinks of Lolita's needs until the end of the book when he finally puts her life above his own. In Lolita, one is pushed into holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously, let the cognitive dissonance begin! The grace of Nabokov's language is inevitably saturated with the seediness of the content, like an elegant meal in a cheap motel room. Although the writing in Lolita is beautiful, the vocabulary is periodically challenging (learned some new words with nowhere to use them) and there are numerous lines in French -- for those who don't read French the choice is to stop and Google or ignore them and keep on reading. For me it was mostly the latter. I want to be clear: if you think Lolita condones, validates, or enjoys pedophilia, you're reading it wrong. And is there some interpretive level in which Lolita, the girl, is gauche, immature new world America, being molested by erudite, decadent old world Europe as personified by Humbert (shades of Henry James)? For those interested see "Nabokov in America" by Robert Roper for Nabokov's impressions of America while traveling the country. After reading, I wondered if any of today's great authors would dare take on other universally condemned issues of our time in like manner. Lolita was translated by Michael Scammel, with the assistance of the author. And apologies to the designer, but I really hated the cover and refused to read it in public; I would have bought any other cover of Lolita if I'd had a choice. [5 Stars]
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