Lolita

[Fran666]

Out of curiousity, what did any of you who've read it think of 'Lolita'?

[Didwot]

It is a while since I read it, but I thought the book was very good. It was reather disturbing that one could empathise wtih the main character, and be revoloted at the same time. I felt the ending was rather lame. It did not adequately show the damage that had been caused.

[Morrisonker]

I love that book, it's beautifully written.  But I agree with you Didwot, it is distrurbing how the reader is made to empathise with Humbert.  I really disliked the chiild, Lolita, i thought she was malicious and calculating.  Almost to the extend where I thought she deserved being abused.  I hasten to add that this not my feelings on feel life victims of child abuse. 

But yes, great book, definately a classic.  Beautiful and dignified despite the two horrific main characters, they're as bad as each other and certainly belong togehter.

[Aschenbach]

Lolita has real depth to it. I liked the original way the story was framed as a confession with a preface from Humbert's lawyer. Yet I felt HHcould not be trusted as a narrator as he sought to justify even his most dreadful actions.

I also felt an empathy as Didwot and Morrisonker have said and Nabokov regularly asserted that Lolita was not supposed to contain any sort of particular moral, and that attempts to find a "moral of the story" were misguided.

I got a feeling of a multi-layered book eg is Quilty HH's double? Lolita - a reincarnation of Annabel ?  I did struggle a bit with the French passages and could have used an annotated edition.

[mslovely]

its a brilliant book i really enjoyed it!!!

[Binky]

If you are studying the book, it would be worth watching the two versions of the film - they are both fairly true to the story.  The author make us emphathise with Humbert Humbert which is disturbing as we have to realise that however sexually forward or manipulative the Lolita seems, she is still a child and it is easy to forget that.

[helster]

Lolita is a beautiful book. It's a wonderful description of love and desire ... if a little creep that he's talking about a child. He descides Lolita as a nymphette and she is not portrayed as a child but a VERy young woman. Hmm. make of it what you will...