Has anyone read Lolita?

[dalek]

Has anyone read this? The narrator is really annoying me - finding it difficult to motivate myself to finish it.

Tell me it's worth persevering

I picked it up in the library recently, read the first page and put it back again for the sake of my blood pressure

Don't bother finishing it. Yes, he is a good writer, which means that you will be stuck with images and scenes in your head that you cannot delete and that you really don't want to have in there. It is a truly horrible book, however well written.

Dolores ('Lolita') is 12 in the book, as I remember. Hollywood made her a far more 'acceptable' 14. And I agree with the poster who commented on the book jacket, the one I had was all 'sexy schoolgirl'. Revolting.

The only Nabakov I have enjoyed is Bend Sinister - if you like dystopian fiction, that is worth a read.

The writing is beautiful - so skilfully done - but the narrative voice doesn't change so if it's not speaking to you now, that's unlikely to change!

I love the musicality of Nabakov's writing:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

I love Lolita. Humbert Humbert is the perfect anti-hero, and Nabokov's writing so beautiful.

I love Brices comment above.

Yes, that beautiful prose has warmed many a paedophile's fiery loins, I am sure

AnyFucker - I wouldn't recommend you read it.

BUT it is a true classic and a fabulous book, and what literature should be about. I don't think there is enough in it that any peadophile would get off on, but it does shine a light into human depravity. I think Nabokov choose it as a pretty uniformly condemned crime, and one carried out in a way which from the outline is despicable. But is written in such a way you can see the protagonists point of view.
In the right circumstances could we commit acts of similar magnitude to Hubert? If not - what do we have he doesn't?
How could people like him be stopped?

The films and the way the media portray it totally miss the point.

BUT I say only read it if you are in a really good place.

Oh for fuck's sake, the last thing Lolita is is a paedophile's charter. It is very beautiful and very frightening and the two things can't be separated because so much of that beauty is in the narrator's twisted words, and I suppose that might mean that someone could find phrases that out of context sound like an apologia for child abuse. In context, though, that's just not how it works.

I haven't read it for years because it left me dazed for a week, but the line that's stuck most comes after a few charming, funny, self-justifying paras from the narrator. Here it is: 'and her sobs in the night -every night, every night - the moment I feigned sleep'. It's his intelligence and his self-protection falling away as for a second he sees what he's actually doing.

TL/DR: You're reading a book with a criminal narrator. What did you expect them to be? Likeable? Easy to identify with? Grow up.

for those of you who love the book and Nabokov's writing, I urge you to have a look at Umberto Eco's "Misreadings" and his parody "Granita", narrated by Umberto Umberto. Clever, clever, funny man.

No need to be so insulting Idaho. Different opinions are allowed.

Personally wouldn't touch it. That's fine. I don't go out of my way to upset myself and probably never will, no matter how grown up I get. I don't need Nabokov to tell me peadophiles are self deluding, narcissistic and tell lies to themselves or others.

7days. Yes, you have a point, that was a bit abrupt of me. I am very very bored, though, of hearing people say that they didn't like a book because they didn't like/couldn't empathise with the narrator. It's a sad misunderstanding of the world if you choose books like you choose your friends.

Don't see why not tbh, nobody is saying Nabokov is cheap trash. He will get into your head. He is that good, seems to be the consensus.

It's thought provoking - that's the point. I personally don't want those thoughts.

Like I don't want particular people as friends.

When you have to resort to "grow up" as a riposte there is no point in engaging further

Lolita, whether you like the book or not (and I remian unconvinced that Nabakov wanted anyone to like it), is a masterpiece of craft.

We are given a narrative voice that is both repellant and beautiful, and that voice never slips.

Genuine question (as I agree that "grow up" is hardly useful as a way of entering into discussion):

Those of you that don't like it because of the subject matter - is it just Lolita that you object to in this way? Or do you not read any literature which deals with distasteful subjects? I'm thinking of things like Perfume, for example, or The Color Purple (where Celie is only fourteen when she is raped by her mother's husband). Or is the latter different because the narrative voice is Celie's rather than the perpetrator?

Do you just read books that don't make you feel uncomfortable?

I was wondering that bear.

TBH, I personally feel that the narrative voice of a victim, can be much more voyeuristic.

I didn't like Perfume & it is not as well written as Lolita, so really no redeeming features for me.

It is a good question, as I have just finished reading Half of a Yellow Sun, which deals with a very upsetting subject (Biafra) and I also remember the trauma of A Fine Balance, which has Jude the Obscure type levels of misery.

I think books can disturb (and perhaps should) and sometimes you are up for that and sometimes you aren't.

In the case of Lolita, it is also weighted with culture baggage, as popular culture has appropriated the image of 'jail bait' and that was brought out in the film adaptation, and it is hard to ignore the sexualised book jacket, which is highly inappropriate.

For that reason, Lolita throws a particular spotlight on our culture and view of young girls that is particularly difficult and uncomfortable to process as a reader, I think.

Thewordfactory,

I think I love you.

Everyone else, I'd apologise, but I do think there's something comical about dismissing Lolita because you don't like the narrator. Of course you're entitled to find Nabokov's prose style irritating (I can't stand Gabriel Garcia Marquez), of course you're entitled not to want to read books that you think might upset you. Bloody hell, there's a reason I've read Gaudy Night five times and Lolita once and it's not because Gaudy Night's the better novel.

What you can't do if you don't want to be mocked is complain that you don't like the book becauseHumbert Humbert isn't very nice. It's missing the point so catastrophically that, fuck it, I am going to find it funny.

It also ties in to the wider self-obsessed book group language of 'I like this book because I like the characters/identify with the characters.'

Or, as my more self-absorbed students would say, it's "relatable". Which I have banned them from saying, because I hate the word, but they think it nevertheless. They like poetry, novels, drama that are "relatable". I worry that this is because they don't like to be challenged to move beyond their comfort zone, either in terms of writing style or subject matter. They seek in literature something which reaffirms the world view they already have.

Fascinating book,lots of complexity. I've read it twice and intend to read it many times again.

We read it for bookclub and it provoked many different reactions,as it should. One member repeatedly stated that it promoted peadophilia (sp) and drowned out the opinions of others. She's a very nice women normally but is convinced that you can 'catch' all kinds of nastiness simply by resting your eyeballs on a page.She has also banned many other books on the grounds they are racist,often missing the entire fecking point...

Sorry,I just needed to rant...

Actually,I don't know what to say when she does this.

Guggenheim,

Quite. Lolita promotes paedophilia like the Handmaud's Tale promotes sexism.

Guggenheim - don't suggest The Help to her for heaven's sake. Or To Kill a Mockingbird.

The idea that books promote racism or sexism or paedophilia or murder simply by writing about them is a very odd one.

Have you asked her to explain her opinion and really challenged her to defend it?

We are given a narrative voice that is both repellant and beautiful, and that voice never slips

So well put, Word, and sums up what I was struggling to say about Lolita. I 'enjoyed' reading the book in the sense that it is a phenomenally well-written book.

It's up there as one of the great 'narrator' novels, alongside (for me) The Good Soldier by Ford, and We Need To Talk About Kevin. The 'enjoyment' of reading the book is in getting to explore and to know an unreliable narrator, and in unpicking what they tell us to discover the truth. A literary challenge, really.

Ooh, We Need to Talk About Kevin is an excellent example of a challenging narrative voice because the narrator herself is so unsympathetic in many ways. I was also thinking about American Psycho where the narrator is absolutely repellant and yet the cleverness of the construction of that voice and the way it satirises American society is remarkable.

And John Self in Money...was there ever a less likeable narrator?

These sorts of books are like a challenge, for both the author and the reader. I like them. The Good Soldier drove me batty, the narrator was so clueless and you wanted to bat him upside the head.