Review by clovetra - Lolita

clovetra 's review for:

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

3.0

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