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Lolita (Penguin Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £3.83
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Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 1660
Media: Paperback
Edition: Film & TV Tie-in ed
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0140264078
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140264074
ASIN: 0140264078
Publication Date: April 30, 1998
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Amazon.co.uk Review
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. Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion: "She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock. " Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of post-war America are filled with both attraction and repulsion: "Those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Selfishness and stupidity cause more pain than evil can October 18, 2008
Graham Worthington (Toronto)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the field of erotic literature, this novel has probably touched the awareness of the public more than any other, to such an extent that the once innocuous name of Lolita has become another name for youthful feminine charm and sexuality, to put it mildly.
Those are the historical facts, but what of the novel's merits? What is most definitely is not is pornographic: it doesn't contain a word of even mildly bad language, nor is it a trashy series of sex scenes featuring a girl of that name. In fact - surprise, surprise if you've never read it - Lolita doesn't even contain a girl called Lolita.
Writing in the first person, Nabakov does not directly tell the story of his famous heroine, but that of Humbert Humbert, a man obsessed with the memory of his dead childhood girlfriend, Annabel, to such an extent that his life is dominated by her loss. As his teens pass, and then his twenties, he fails to mature beyond his loss. When he meets a girl of twelve, Dolores Haze, who resembles his lost love, he attempts to posses her, body and soul, and in his obsessed mind he re-names her "Lolita." The final result is that both he and Dolores are destroyed, along with several other characters.
Is it a sad story of an unfortunately obsessed man, who should perhaps be pitied as much as condemned? No, for there is more to it than that. Is it a simple story? No, for Nabakov is not a simple writer, telling a plain story of black versus white. If he were, then Dolores would be a naïve and innocent girl, and Humbert an absolute villain.
But Nabokov is not a limited moraliser, wagging a solemn preacher's finger at a wrong-doer seeking his evil way in a world of innocence. Instead he examines the complexities of both love and lust, for Humbert finds that his hidden, furtive desire has met its mate, as he discovers that Dolores has an open, natural tendency to depravity to match his. Moreover, most of the characters that the two are in contact with are flawed, and some are so self-deceiving and tacky that the reader may be drawn into preferring Humbert's admitted lechery, and the reader, not allowed to deal easily with absolutes in a simple situation of right and wrong, is made to journey in an intriguing world of comparisons.
Whereas Dolores's nature is a mixture of easily given love and defensive cynicism - she rapidly falls in love with the handsome, exotic Frenchman - Humbert is cowardly, conceited and stupid, with a talent for bungling everything he attempts, from emotional relationships to violent crime, a failing that he does not notice.
Failing also to see that Dolores is attempting to seduce him, he seeks to trick here into a physical intimacy that she would have awarded him willingly. As his stupidity becomes more apparent, so does his indifference to the well being of others, as he accepts marries a woman he detests to gain control of Dolores, and later contemplates murdering her.
But all his desperate, bungling manoeuvres fail, until to his surprise - Dolores casually offers herself to him, after revealing that she has already had a lover.
Technically this is the climax of the novel, and here Nabokov ends the first of the two books into which it is divided. Some critics say that the latter half is too long, and I agree with them, remarking however that it may merely seem to long, due to being the record of a highly unpleasant relationship.
At about this time, the death of her mother gives Humbert total control of Dolores. He has achieved his great ambition, but he proves utterly incapable of living with his success. Dolores, sullen at the wandering life that they adopt, but entirely dependent on Humbert, strives not to regain her freedom, but for the two to lead some kind of stable life. But Humbert, living in a world of his own, composed of ecstasy and fear - he has gained Dolores, but is terrified of discovery - fails to listen to her, or realise that the actuality that he has gained is living Dolores, not imaginary Lolita.
Trapped in his conceited self-image - he is a pedantic scholar, who has produced no work of his own, but imagines himself a sophisticated artist - he fails to communicate with Dolores, or lower himself from his pretensions to her simpler, healthier attitude to life - "speak English!" as she says at one point - and he destroys what remains of her love for him.
As Dolores grows older she is able to gain more control over her affairs, and she tortures him as he has tortured her, and eventually escapes him. After several years of agonised search Humbert finds her again. Dolores, prematurely aged by hardship, is no longer the cute nymphet that he lusted for, but Humbert still loves her. He has finally achieved a maturity of sorts. He gives her a needed gift of cash, and the two part forever. Later both are destroyed by exterior forces.
However, Nabokov is not such a sentimentalist as to make Humbert's redemption complete, and it is by a further lunatic act that he causes his own end.
Graham Worthington, author, Wake of the Raven
 Not for me, sorry. September 4, 2008
noggy1810 (Ireland)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I see that I am in a minority of one (not the first time) but "Lolita" was a struggle for me. The obvious reason not to like this book is its storyline but I think that the paedophilia aspect is tastefully done. No, my problem lies with the constant references to other classic artists, writers and philosophers which meant nothing to me. Very little happens but what does is described to ridiculous lengths. There are constant interruptions to the writing with French that I couldn't understand. I needed an Oxford English dictionary as a constant companion and felt that Nabokov really was just showing off with English not being his first language. Maybe I am not educated or intelligent enough to appreciate this book but it did very little for me. Style maybe, substance no way.
Masterpiece July 11, 2008
Mr. S. Fell (Lancashire, England)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have read this book a number of times, and can quite happily pick it up and read a single page purely for the pure majesty of the language.
Martin Amis, son of Kingsley Amis and a stylist like Nabokov, has a true love of this book and desribed it, inter alia, as "pure sensual pleasure". A feat of genius, made more staggering by the fact that it was written in Nabokov's second language.
I challenge anyone with a love of the English language and a heart to read this book and ever forget it.
My favourite book of ALL time May 19, 2008
C. L. Heffer (UK)
This is by far my most favourite book in the world ever! Words cannot describe how much I adore this book. It is true the subject matter is uncomfortable to think about especially today. Considering that English is not Nabokov's first language he writes it so beautifully that almost every page has a line which really sounds lyrical, rythmic and just plainly beautiful.
The book pulls your moral thoughts all over the place. The question; who takes advantage of who? is one which I always come back to, and like to ask the people who read it.
I have read this book about four times which I almost never do and I recommend it to everyone I read. It is, I suppose, an example of how something can be beautiful and wrong at the same time. It is also ultimately a book about love. Unrequited love, forbidden love, consuming love, manipulative love. There are so many aspects to love explored in this book.
Superlative April 30, 2008
Compulsive Reader (New York, New York)
Where to begin? One of the most moving novels in the English language - rich, lyrical, intelligent, and eloquent beyond belief. Not for fans of Raymond Carver.
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