Book Review: Lolita

By: Vladimir Nabokov

Review: Lolita has been on my shelf for many years, a book I’ve picked up and put down often. Knowing the subject matter, it feels like I’m violating my ethical code to even open the front cover. After coming out the other side of Lolita, I can say that this is a book primarily about the deep emotional battles of troubled souls. You can sense that this is an author who loves words, yet the words sometimes suffocate, even though this is some of the most beautifully polished prose you will encounter. It’s every bit a classic. At times I was deeply troubled and despairing about where I was being led, and each time Nabokov anticipated this reaction. He would address the reader directly, asking us to persist and stay with him. A writer that can challenge and manipulate our compassion and empathy between such flawed characters so effectively is a true literary master.

Pages: 309

Genre: Literary Fiction

Published: 1959

Reviewer: Jody

Book Blurb: ‘Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.’

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, ‘to fix once and for all the perilous magic of nymphets’. This seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov’s dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.