Lolita (edit title)

• Rated 5 stars

“Let's just say the book is a story of dictatorship told by a dictator. Trust the tale, not the teller. But Nabokov's good: I'm really sympathetic over what has happened to the narrator, even what he's unreliable. xx”

• Rated 4 stars

“The books first half was fast but the american holiday was a bit slow... however would like to read it again someday!”

• Rated 0 stars

“Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:

She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake”

• Rated 3 stars

“It took me nearly a year to finish this book. I enjoyed it - but was not tricked into complacency by Humbert Humbert's beautiful language. I was deeply affected by the murder and rape in this novel and at times, it was just too much. I couldn't go on.

That's not to say I thought it was a terrible novel. Quite the opposite. It was beautifully written, and Nabokov himself agrees that Humbert is a vile character, but one that almost successfully brings the reader to understand his plight, through the use of a most exquisite verbal trickery. ”

• Rated 4 stars

“Took me a while to absorb this one.”

• Rated 5 stars

“I've been scared of reading Lolita for such a long time, but finally given it a chance. I mean, there aren't many novels out there with a more sinister reputation. Some part of me feared that merely reading it implied guilt by association.

And now? Oh boy.

So, firstly and inescapably, it's a great novel. Subject matter aside, it's a joy to read. Wonderful language, compelling mystery, inventive use of multi-lingual cultural references. It's both intelligent and erudite and compares favourably with the very best of modern fiction.

But, the subject matter is so perverse that the reader is forced into a strongly negative reaction. And that's clearly the author's intent. If you like a book to offer an emotional journey, then Lolita delivers. But it's such a negative journey. Having said that, the worst parts of Lolita repulsed me less than the worst parts of various crime fiction novels I've read.


This is one of just a handful of truly diabolical novels I've read. If you're the sort of reader who likes "Crime & Punishment", then you'll probably like Lolita too.”

• Rated 3 stars

“This book was ok, it was drawn out a bit much and had some boring chapters that slowed the pace.”

• Rated 2 stars

“Lolita van Vladimir Nabokov is vanaf het moment van publicatie in 1955 controversieel geweest, vanwege de door de hoofdpersoon beleden liefde voor een nymfachtig jong meisje, dat nu eens lief gewillig is en dan weer gemelijk en weerbarstig. Zijn hopeloze liefde leidt tot een moord, of een vermeende moord, en het boek is vanuit de gevangenis geschreven in de vorm van een bekentenis voor de jury van de rechtbank die hem moet veroordelen of vrijspreken, 'natuurlijk niet om mijn hoofd, maar om mijn ziel te redden'.

Het is de tragikomische geschiedenis van een gecultiveerde middelbare man die als een blok valt voor Lolita, het 12-jarige dochtertje van zijn hospita. Om haar in zijn macht te krijgen trouwt hij met de moeder. Als deze verongelukt staat niets zijn geluk meer in de weg -behalve dan het feit dat Lolita helaas een eigen wil blijkt te hebben en haar eigen geluk bevecht. Het relaas is geschreven vanuit het manisch-erotische perspectief van de man, die een duivels knap stilist blijkt, maar indirect krijgt men toch ook een roerend beeld van het meisje achter het seksobject. Ook het Amerika van halverwege de 20e eeuw wordt prachtig getypeerd.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Beautiful book. Sparked an interest in Nabokov.”

• Rated 0 stars

“I'm giving it a rest right now, because I have to struggle to get to the end of a page... Reading has to be a pleasure, not torture. Russian literature isn't one of my favs... :(”