[Bookpossum]

I have just finished reading "Lolita" and am still mulling it over. I certainly can't say I enjoyed the experience, but I do admire Nabokov's skill. As mentioned already, some of his descriptive passages, for example when writing about their travels across the States, are beautiful.

But there is also the skill of making the reader feel almost complicit in what Humbert is planning and then doing, and that's a very nasty thing to feel. I was reminded of the very clever way in which Alfred Hitchcock could manipulate his audience to want something nasty to happen, as for example when in "Dial M for Murder" Ray Milland was making the phone call which was intended to result in his wife's murder, and he wasn't initially able to get through.

And there is that horrible claim which seems to be made by many pedophiles, that "she seduced me". Humbert seems to think that he truly loved Dolores, and yet he acknowledges that what he destroyed her childhood. There is a passage near the end where he remembers seeing her reflection in a mirror and that she looked helpless. Poor child, she was indeed.