Lolita
Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
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Community Reviews
October is banned books month so we each chose a banned book and read it then gave a report to the group.
Nabokov forces the reader to sympathize with a monster. At no point did my disgust for humbert humbert falter, not even for a single phoneme.
I found it difficult to discuss this book with anyone as I had to separate the story from the beauty of the language. Humbert is a pedophile and insane and I think many people focus on the storyline and miss the author's absolutely immense talent with language - a language by the way that was not even his second language but his third or fourth! It blows my mind that be could be so skilled at writing in a language that was not native to him. What I enjoyed about Lolita was certainly not the actual uncomfortable and cruel story, which was extremely disturbing to put it mildly. But Nabokov is an unbelievably gifted writer and his use of language is so skilled and so beautiful, it took my breath away at times. I listened to this book on tape but will have to buy it to study some of his descriptions. I was particularly taken with his description as an Englishman driving through our American countryside - he described the raw, stark beauty of the landscape - so different from Europe. Also, I wonder if people can see past the pervert to the man who was in love (unfortunately) with a child. There are elements of his love that haunt me. His love was unbelievably selfish - like many loves are - but it was also deeper and truer than most. The problem though was that it was all one-sided and as we all know, true abiding love must come from two directions, from two people, not one. After reading this I feel compelled to read some guides about the book so I can explore certain passages that confused me. So much of the story was mired up in Humbert's insanity that it became very difficult to tell what was real and what was just his sickness. This was not an "easy" book to listen to but on my audio book, Jeremy Irons NAILED it. I'm sure it would not have been half so amazing with a lessor actor reading it.
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