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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Incest, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder
Antes de leer Lolita leí comentarios de gente que decía que llegaban a simpatizar con Humbert Humber debido a la forma en que narra la historia, así que cuando lo empecé tenía miedo que me pasará lo mismo, pero no. La verdad destete al narrador desde el primer momento y me producía repugnancia su forma de describir a las mujeres en general, no solo a las "nínfulas". Pero, por sobre todo, lo que más sentí con esta lectura fue tristeza. Sentía un profundo pesar por la vida de Dolores y la forma en que Humbert nos narra como le destruyó su infancia. No podía evitar pensar que a pesar de ser ficción es una situación que sufren muchas niñas a diario, este pensamiento me acompaño durante toda la lectura.
Por otro lado, en esta edición se describe el libro como una novela de amor y la parte trasera tiene frases de críticos que incluso califican las descripciones que Humbert hace de Lolita como "tiernas". Aterrador.
Por otro lado, en esta edición se describe el libro como una novela de amor y la parte trasera tiene frases de críticos que incluso califican las descripciones que Humbert hace de Lolita como "tiernas". Aterrador.
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Finished this book a little while ago but couldn't write the review.
This book is insane. The main character is insane, his relationships are insane and his way of living is insane. But this book was so interesting. Because we do not often get to see how a *sexual predator* behaves in such details. And to see in such length every important relationship this man has was fascinating. I definitely believe there will be an "after" I read this book.
So yeah in the end, the themes of this book are incredibly hard but it is also very interesting to see the characters grow up (especially Lolita) and understand how their view of the world changes with time.
Finished this book a little while ago but couldn't write the review.
This book is insane. The main character is insane, his relationships are insane and his way of living is insane. But this book was so interesting. Because we do not often get to see how a *sexual predator* behaves in such details. And to see in such length every important relationship this man has was fascinating. I definitely believe there will be an "after" I read this book.
So yeah in the end, the themes of this book are incredibly hard but it is also very interesting to see the characters grow up (especially Lolita) and understand how their view of the world changes with time.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
this is actually like the fourth time i'm rereading this book, and each time i finish it i'm reminded why it's such a well-loved and hated classic. it's absolutely fascinating.
i feel like at some point i should read something else by nabokov, but whenever i plan to pick up another one of his books i end up rereading this one instead. oh well.
i feel like at some point i should read something else by nabokov, but whenever i plan to pick up another one of his books i end up rereading this one instead. oh well.
My usual attempts at remaining nonjudgmental were sorely tested while reading Lolita. Humbert Humbert is not a likeable character, he is creepy, pathetic, scheming, clearly unstable, and just ewww! However like a novel about a serial killer, you start to find yourself understanding the murderer, siding with him/her, and getting nervous when it looks like they might get caught. This happened for me with H.H. and while I actively despised him throughout, I found myself hoping he would find solace from his perceived suffering. Trust me I am still conflicted about this and I feel like this book made me into a bi-polar psychopath, one moment I wanted to rip H.H.'s balls off and then the next moment I wanted to cry because of the damage he was doing to himself and Lolita.
Also, I don't understand the debate/controversy about whether Lolita actively and deliberately tries to seduce H.H.
Lolita is clearly the victim of a perverse pedophile. While she had a young girl's innocent crush on her Mother's tenant and gave him a small quick kiss (like she would a schoolyard playmate), any perceived seductive actions are clearly the biased view of a narrator who desperately wants romantic attention and sexual favors from a 12 year old. Also, we don't ever truly know if Lolita does the things that H.H. says she does, our narrator is hardly reliable, and has admittedly been in and out of sanitariums for years. Even if Lolita is aware of her allure to creepy old men, she is no way at fault for H.H.'s actions towards her. NOBODY asks to be raped.
Throughout this pseudo-memoir, H.H. knows that he will be judged harshly for his crimes and that he is likely to remain misunderstood, and rightly so. This, however, doesn't keep him from trying to rationalize his desires for children and attempting to lessen the gravity of his actions by siting the accepted cultural practices of ancient and recent societies and clinical sounding definitions of "nymphets" (all of which sound like personal attempts at justifying H.H.'s actions to his conscience).
Beautifully written and often unexpectedly humorous (The line, "Nymphets do not occur in polar regions" actually made me laugh out loud), Lolita is unarguably a great work of English Literature. While there doesn't appear to be any so-called moral to the story, I think that the point of Lolita is to take a literary snapshot of mid-19th century America and the mind of a disturbed individual.
Also, I don't understand the debate/controversy about whether Lolita actively and deliberately tries to seduce H.H.
Lolita is clearly the victim of a perverse pedophile. While she had a young girl's innocent crush on her Mother's tenant and gave him a small quick kiss (like she would a schoolyard playmate), any perceived seductive actions are clearly the biased view of a narrator who desperately wants romantic attention and sexual favors from a 12 year old. Also, we don't ever truly know if Lolita does the things that H.H. says she does, our narrator is hardly reliable, and has admittedly been in and out of sanitariums for years. Even if Lolita is aware of her allure to creepy old men, she is no way at fault for H.H.'s actions towards her. NOBODY asks to be raped.
Throughout this pseudo-memoir, H.H. knows that he will be judged harshly for his crimes and that he is likely to remain misunderstood, and rightly so. This, however, doesn't keep him from trying to rationalize his desires for children and attempting to lessen the gravity of his actions by siting the accepted cultural practices of ancient and recent societies and clinical sounding definitions of "nymphets" (all of which sound like personal attempts at justifying H.H.'s actions to his conscience).
Beautifully written and often unexpectedly humorous (The line, "Nymphets do not occur in polar regions" actually made me laugh out loud), Lolita is unarguably a great work of English Literature. While there doesn't appear to be any so-called moral to the story, I think that the point of Lolita is to take a literary snapshot of mid-19th century America and the mind of a disturbed individual.
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
je suis sur le cul.
Plus sérieusement, je comprends pourquoi ce livre est controversé mais c'est si evident que l'auteur n'a jamais eu pour but de faire l'apologie de la ped0philie??? Alors certes le narrateur est un pervers mais il faut savoir dissocier les deux, est c'est justement là qu'on voir le talent de nabokov: il parvient à créer le personnage le plus répugnant et repoussant qu'on puisse imaginer et à en faire le narrateur de son roman.
Pour autant, pas à un moment on ne ressent de la compassion ou de l'affection à son égard, et ça fait de ce livre une lecture difficile mais excellente, car même si le personnage de lolita n'intervient que rarement, on perçoit sa souffrance dans ses silences, dans ses actions. On entend ses pleurs, mais face à cette vie volée, elle ne devient plus que l'ombre d'une enfant. On la voit petit à petit devenir un etre passif, qui survit.
Humbert Humbert, lui, est enfermé dans sa perversité comme dans une prison, aveugle à la souffrance de lolita, il n'est qu'un predateur qui se positionne en victime de sa propre pensée.
Nabokov ecrit d'autre part de manière sublime, avec de magnifiques tournures de phrases et un vocabulaire riche en faisant le portrait d'une Amérique trop lisse et superficielle, bien que ce ne soit pas son objectif initial.
Bref, ce livre est un chef d'œuvre.
Plus sérieusement, je comprends pourquoi ce livre est controversé mais c'est si evident que l'auteur n'a jamais eu pour but de faire l'apologie de la ped0philie??? Alors certes le narrateur est un pervers mais il faut savoir dissocier les deux, est c'est justement là qu'on voir le talent de nabokov: il parvient à créer le personnage le plus répugnant et repoussant qu'on puisse imaginer et à en faire le narrateur de son roman.
Pour autant, pas à un moment on ne ressent de la compassion ou de l'affection à son égard, et ça fait de ce livre une lecture difficile mais excellente, car même si le personnage de lolita n'intervient que rarement, on perçoit sa souffrance dans ses silences, dans ses actions. On entend ses pleurs, mais face à cette vie volée, elle ne devient plus que l'ombre d'une enfant. On la voit petit à petit devenir un etre passif, qui survit.
Humbert Humbert, lui, est enfermé dans sa perversité comme dans une prison, aveugle à la souffrance de lolita, il n'est qu'un predateur qui se positionne en victime de sa propre pensée.
Nabokov ecrit d'autre part de manière sublime, avec de magnifiques tournures de phrases et un vocabulaire riche en faisant le portrait d'une Amérique trop lisse et superficielle, bien que ce ne soit pas son objectif initial.
Bref, ce livre est un chef d'œuvre.
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
humbert humbert i wish you nothing but pain and misery and death and castration and also a very public beat down.
i think media has flandarises this book so bad. i mean yes pop cultures does tend to water down books to their bare bones — e.g. jane eyre is only a love story, nothing else — and i think it demeans what this book is about. people paint this book to be about dirty raunchy paedophilic creep who in graphic detail consistently rapes a young girl and it’s so sick and twisted and oh nabokov how could you write this you sick and twisted man. but in actuality this book never attempts to paint humbert as a good guy. does humbert himself try to do this? of course. but anyone who reads this and is in fact not a Proud Paedophile can see right through this man’s BS. and thank the fucking lord this book does not have graphic rape scenes. at most it is only implied, and i mean yeah there is graphic scenes where humbert goes on and on about how he loves x feature of “nymphets”, but it’s not painted in a way by nabokov where you the reader are supposed to be on humbert’s side. when this perv is yapping about how he’s got it good because he’s rubbing one out whilst his fuckjng stepdaughter is stretched across his lap, the reader is made to want to gag and strangle this guy. never once in this entire book did feeling sympathetic for this dude cross my mind, not only because i have a shred of morality, but because nabokov makes it blatantly clear this guy is The Worst. i hate that this book gets watered down to what it really isn’t! call a spade a spade! give nabokov his flowers for this! i mean no other book has elicited such raw disgust from me, plus this was his first book written in english!!! dude was a native russian speaker!!! give the man some credit oml
ok with that disclaimer out of the way, how else did i find this book? i found h.h. shitstain to actually be quite an interesting character. his moral flip-flopping, whilst aggravating, was fascinating, as he attempts to rationalise what he is doing, and then in another scene admits to the reader that he knows what he’s doing is fucked up and there’s really no excuse. i also found his general neurotic behaviour quite… not entertaining per say, but more so an insightful case study. his scheming, generally how pathetic this man is, as well as numerous other facts about me had me hooked. please note though i was not hooked to reading about a kiddy diddler willingly; reading this book is like watching a car crash in slow motion. you can’t look away. nabokov wrote this car crash too well.
i’m also really thankful this was easy in terms of the language used. usually classics break my brain with the old-timey language used to the point i can’t confidently say what i had just read, but i appreciate the fact that what was written made sense to my small brain. the content though was not easy for… obvious reasons.
dolores as a character was quite fascinating as well (i refuse to call her lolita even though that’s technically a nickname for dolores idc). at some points i was confused whether she was actually a “willing participant” (ew but i can’t find a better way to describe it) or what, but once elif (hey shout out elif) reminded me that humbert is the one telling the story, and he likely is manipulating it to fit his narrative, or is just straight up making shit up, i found her character to be ingenious. her ending was quite depressing in a sense, her relationship with quilty was conflicting, and she as a character was defo underexplored in my opinion, but i think that’s the point — she was just a means to an ends for humbert.
the first part of this book was great. easily the best, not only because i didn’t have to read about him molesting a child, but because i feel like it was more a study on his psyche than the rest of the book. at the beginning of part two i do think the book began taking a downwards turn, as there was virtually no plot, and once dolores went to school the book went off the rails in a bad way. suddenly it became a crime novel??? the tone changes so randomly, and the ending feels unsatisfying, incomplete and like it belonged to a different story compared to the first part of this book. i really didn’t like the direction the second half of the book took, and i think that’s solely because the book did a 180 in terms of literally everything, but i will say i did like seeing humbert lowkey lose his mind.
i think you can tell im defo passionate about this book in some forms. but would i recommend this book to someone? Ehhhhhhh. i wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. i do think in some forms this is a crucial piece of literature, but i also think anyone overly praising this book too much without criticisms of humbert needs to be placed on a watch list. this book toes the line very closely between glorifying and vilifying (as it should) paedophiles, and i think the banning of this book is justified if not a bit misguided. but i do recognise some people will pick this book up expecting graphic sex scenes. and thank god this book didn’t deliver on that.
anyways i wish i had more critical thoughts on this. but thank you elif for buddy reading this with me seriously i wouldn’t be able to get thru this without whipping out a “GET A LOAD OF THIS GUY” every time humbert spoke. and for my final words of this review — fuck humbert humbert.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Car accident, Murder, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Kidnapping, Death of parent
Minor: Rape, Sexual assault
challenging
dark
reflective
sad