Having finished this book, I had intended to write about it while it remained fresh in my memory. However, such is my nature that I took far longer to plan it than I will probably take to actually write it, and alas, you’re left with what I hope to be a good insight into a wonderful novel, but to promise would be futile.

I’d like to demonstrate my enjoyment of it, but I must warn that if you have any intention of reading it in the near future, you might be better served by not reading any further - my temptation to reveal details has always been too strong to control, and so read it first.

Lolita is a novel by a russian author - Vladimir Nabokov - which was first published in 1955, and came highly recommended to me over the last month or so by several sources. I must admit to having recently taken a greater interest in classic literature, an enjoyment which is relatively new to me. Having read works of Jane Austen and heavily researched, albeit never experienced, articles of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (hmm, there seems to be a Russian theme here), I was keen to read Lolita because of its unique nature. This was not least because its author, Russian by origin, chose first to pen in English, before later translating to his native tongue. This in itself makes his work all the more credible. Seldom have I seen such a creative connection between the author and the reader constructed by the common themes in his own coined phrases; the mixture of French/English dialect used by the fictional narrator, Mr. Humbert Humbert; the double entendres and the subtle irony. Looking back at my reading of Lolita, it was not an easy book to read: the language is complex and the structure is unorthodox. And so I compliment the author on such exemplary creative skill in a language I’m supposed to consider ‘my own’.

It is important to note also, despite the ‘tip-toe’ nature of the subject at hand - the obsession and sexual lust for a 12-year old girl by a scholar almost 20 years her senior - this is not, as some might presume, a pornographic novel. On the contrary, it is the narration of a man psychologically gripped by the loss of his childhood sweetheart, Annabel. In Dolores ‘Dolly,’ ‘Lola,’ ‘Lo’ Haze, Humbert sees his Annabel. Through the entire sordid affair, first with his marriage of Lo’s mother, last with what is an inevitable climax, he attempts to justify his pursuit of the young ‘nymphet’.

Becoming her natural stepfather-esque guardian following Mother Haze’s death, he drugs her in an attempt to molest her unknowingly. When the sleeping pills have no effect, she instead seduces him consciously the following morning, which is where the tale reaches a point of no return.

Nabokov spares the reader the details - as I said previously, Lolita is not pornography; Lolita is not graphic; and Lolita is by no means grotesque. Lolita is a work of art which lives up to its acclaimed reputation.

‘Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine… You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent’ - Martin Amis, Observer