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Search - Lolita
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Lolita Author: |
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Book Information
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Other Versions of this Book: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Hardcover
Book Description:
When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause celebre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. Awe and exhilaration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
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Top Member Book Reviews
Leigh P. (
9 member(s) found this review helpful.
This is a relatively quick-reading gem of a book that may surprise you. Don't go into it thinking it's the story of a predatory man lurking after a young girl. Think of this as a glimpse into the mind of man who finds himself feeling emotions he knows are wrong, but chooses to ignore them based on reciprocity.
Nabokov fills this book with puns and anagrams galore, and having dear Humbert Humbert poke fun at the names of Lolita's classmates at one point. This is a word lover's dream if you pay close enough attention.
Additionally, this novel contains my favorite sentence in all of literature, describing the death of Humbert Humbert's mother; again, an example of Nabokov's command of words and sentences. Definitely recommended.
Daphne H. (
9 member(s) found this review helpful.
Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.
4 member(s) found this review helpful.
This is one of the best novels I've ever read. It is a horrific story that is elegantly written. I find it fascinating how many people consider Lolita a love story. I personally found it to be a disturbing tale of unrequited obsession, and the lengths one man is willing to go to in order to possess the object of his desire. But one of the great things about this book is how many ways it can be interpreted. The reader is left to decide whether the narrator, Humbert Humbert, can be trusted to accurately relay the events that occur between himself and Lolita.
3 member(s) found this review helpful.
Although beautifully written this book is not the best love story ever written. As a parent I did not enjoy the subject matter. An older man falls for a child of 12.7 years, and spends the next 3 years travailing around America staying in one hotel after another. He is trying to build a life of sorts for the 2 of them. I find Humbert Humbert to be completely obsessive and misguided. It took me a long time to read this book, but I finished it thinking it would get better. How could I not like this classic?
3 member(s) found this review helpful.
Lolita is one of those books that I had always meant to read but was too shy to ever pick up! I was surprised at how humorous this book is, how well written, how well crafted. It was fascinating, actually, not prurient.
Karee L. (
2 member(s) found this review helpful.
I tried to like this book, I knew what it was about going into it, but I just couldn't finish it. It is the story of a pedophile who takes advantage of the vulnerable state of his step-daughter after the death of her mother who he only married in order to have the opportunity to drug her daughter and take advantage of her then. I decided to read it because it was billed as a love story, maybe it ended that way, but I couldn't make myself finish it to find out.
2 member(s) found this review helpful.
Disgusting. I was only able to get through about 220 pages. At first I thought it was just plain silly. But then it got disturbing. I don't see at all how this is a "classic." It would have been shocking in its time, certainly, but I don't shocking constitutes "good."
2 member(s) found this review helpful.
I only read the book because it was the only one left on my list of top books of the 20th century-and because I read "Reading Lolita in Tehran." But- it is something that should be read. Excellent writing.
1 member(s) found this review helpful.
What a great, but twisted, love story.
Read All Book Reviews of "Lolita"
Please Rate these Book Reviews
Jennifer R. (Although this has an interesting plotline, I don't care for the style of writing.
Amanda S. (I have to say it was a very disturbing book. Its usually not something I read but I did kinda liked it. NOt something I would read again but it was ok
Nadine D. (Read for my book club and absolutely HATED this book! Yet, many others like it, maybe you're one of them! :)
Read All Book Reviews of "Lolita"
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