Lolita regularly tops lists of classics in American literature. It also happens to be the favorite book of an old friend with whom I'd love to have a conversation about this work now that I've finally read it

It's been been adapted a couple of times to the big screen, once by Stanley Kubrick (62) and more recently with the main role of Humbert Humbert played by Jeremy Irons (97)

Most of the book is narrated by Humbert, in the first person. The reader soon finds he has a sick compulsive attraction to nymphet or in plain English, very young girls

The first part of the story explains the root of such a fetish. The narrator who came from Paris, ends up using all throughout the novel many French expressions which I found interesting and accurate in their use but a casual reader might get annoyed and confused by them (this stems from Nabokov's command on the French language having fled Russia and Germany for France, which he would flee again for America)

Things become quite twisted when Humbert meanders (to put it nicely) to America and find lodging with a certain Mrs Hayes. He immediately becomes enamored with Hayes' nymphet daughter: Dolores-Lola-Lolita. In a pretty demented move, he ends up marrying the mother to be close to the daughter

I find this a lot more controversial and harder to stomach than Tropic of Cancer which I was trying to read at the same time. It's also a lot better

The whole thing reads pretty well, and it also reads as a defense tirade of a madman to a jury.

The 2nd part of the novel deals entirely with Humbert's life with Lolita, their adventures across America though they read like a blur which is what Nabokov wanted I suppose. The relationship strain inevitably and comes eventually to an end

We find actually in the end that protagonist murders the man who took away his Lolita. The inner torment that he goes through is not unlike some of the modern stuff Nothomb writes about in her psychological thrillers

A tad too wordy, some sentences are stretched beyond comprehension

This is a most intriguing work