Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
Contemporary fiction Literary fictionRomanceYoung adult
A confession so seductive in style that readers must keep asking what the charm is hiding. The prose is lyrical and precise, while a steady unease builds under the narrator's charming, confessional voice.
Feels like unease.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy ornate, voice-driven literary fiction and don't mind a narrator who tests your sympathies. Be warned that the narrator's seductive style cloaks an unsettling sexual obsession, and the dense, allusive prose can feel demanding.
Why read it
It shows how style can persuade and conceal at once, giving you a close look at a narrator whose eloquence is part of the problem.
A page from the book
The name he gives her is a spell, a claim, and a cage.
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov.Nabokov wrote Lolita in English, then translated it into Russian himself; he had already published nine novels in Russian under the pen name V. Sirin.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Lolita for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy ornate, voice-driven literary fiction and don't mind a narrator who tests your sympathies. Be warned that the narrator's seductive style cloaks an unsettling sexual obsession, and the dense, allusive prose can feel demanding.
- What is Lolita like?
- The prose is lyrical and precise, while a steady unease builds under the narrator's charming, confessional voice. Feels like unease.
- What should I read after Lolita?
- If you liked Lolita, try The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins), American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) and Matched (Ally Condie).
A taste of the feed
A home you can't stop looking at, even though it hurts.
I lived at number twenty-three Blenheim Road for five years, blissfully happy and utterly wretched. I can’t look at it now. That was my first home. Not my parents’ place, not a flatshare with other students, my first home. I can’t bear to look at it. Well, I can, I do, I want to, I don’t want to, I try not to. Every day I tell myself not to look, and every day I look. I can’t help myself, even though there is nothing I want to see there, even though anything I do see will hurt me.
The Girl on the Train · Paula Hawkins
The hunger of waiting for a touch that might undo you.
I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don’t know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.
Matched · Ally Condie
What it costs to sleep through a year you don’t want to live.
I had started “hibernating” as best I could in mid-June of 2000. I was twenty-four years old. I watched summer die and autumn turn cold and gray through a broken slat in the blinds. My muscles withered. The sheets on my bed yellowed, although I usually fell asleep in front of the television on the sofa, which was from Pottery Barn and striped blue and white and sagging and covered in coffee and sweat stains.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation · Ottessa Moshfegh
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