Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita - book review

This book was a difficult and creepy topic to write about I would imagine, and its somewhat bad reputation is a classic case of readers associating a character with the writer himself. The problem, however, that I have with it isn't the topic — I just found the story to be not that captivating.

Nabokov writes masterfully and I couldn't imagine another book on this topic that would keep my attention for so long, and yet I didn't care much for the story itself. Yes, the way Nabokov describes a pedophile's self-obsession, his pseudo-intellectual rants and his arrogance mixed in with self-awareness made me pay attention and at times I felt uncomfortable for understanding him (the last part, I'm sure, was something that many readers would blame Nabokov for, but I think it's misguided to do that — good writing is one that makes you sympathize even with antagonists), but the pacing of the story seemed too slow and I was paying attention more at how it was written rather than what was written. In other words, I enjoyed it more as a potential writer rather than as a reader.

There were many scenes where the narrator's obsession permeated the description of other people, of random stores with lists of items in it in excruciating detail — all that I believe was done to transport us into Humbert Humbert's mind, leaving us nauseated from the abundance of details; details which seemed tedious and irrelevant most of the time. But if a book is not enjoyable then why the hell would I care about all those details, even if they serve a stylistic purpose?

As for the positives, I applaud Nabokov for avoiding clichés and vulgarities — you'd be surprised but I don't remember anything sexually vulgar (in a modern tabloid kind of way) being described in the novel; a novel, I remind you, that is about a middle-aged man's sexual desire for a 12 year old "nymphette".

The fact that it was written in the first person of course helped with us readers feeling like we're being held hostage into a pedophile's mind and Nabokov used that advantage to its full extent; at times even the narrator from Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground seemed more likeable than the one from Lolita and that's saying a lot.

All in all, a great study on how to write the thoughts of an antagonist, not so sure about the story itself, it was quite a slog.

I did enjoy Nabokov's style though so I'm looking forward to reading his other lesser-known novels.

Rating: 3/5