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Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov ( Penguin Books Ltd )
Release Date: 1998-04-30
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $16.50
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Product Description
The story of Humbert Humbert, poet and pervert, and his obsession with 12-year-old Dolores Haze. Determined to possess his "Lolita" both carnally and artistically, Humbert embarks on a disastrous courtship that can only end in tragedy.
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 Amazing book when you can read it... ( loborick )
Because of my notion of what the book was about, I had a hard time starting it. As soon as I picked it up, I was hooked.
This is about a mentally disturbed man and how his mind works. And Nabokov's writing is amazing. I couldn't believe English is his third language. He is a master.
The other reviews tell you about the story. It is a must read. He is a craftsman of the English language. And it is as contemporary as if written yesterday.
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 I Felt Soiled After Reading This ( memccauley6 )
Nabokov is a genius. His mastery of prose is without peer. His words dance, they sing, they cavort.
I just wish he had written another story, instead of this miserably depressing tale of a crazy pedophile on a cross-country raping spree with a twelve year old girl.
I guess I am not one of the "wise, sensitive, and staunch people who understood my book" which Nabokov writes about in his condescending 1956 afterward.
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BETTER THAN THE GREAT MOVIE
JEREMY IRONS IS MY FAVORITE ACTOR. THE BOOK WAS SUPERIOR TO THE MOVIE BECAUSE OF NABOKOV'S PROSE
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Sensual...interesting... ( jennkwon )
When I read this book, I was surprised by the authors voice. There was a delicate beat and melody to his words. His writing was beautiful, and I felt as though I could feel everything that was happening.
It is a bit graphic, so I would recommend this for a more mature audience..young adult(18+).
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 I hated Lolita ( bradsumner )
I am aware there is a difference between an author and his characters. I am aware that art does not need to plead for morality. I acknowledge Nabokov's skill as a stylist of english prose.
I hated the book after it left planet earth about half way through and orbited somewhere in Nabokov's childish brain while treating a deeply troubling theme. Lolita never became real as a character - a fatal literary, rather than psychological or moral, flaw.
I could not read it without being acutely aware that: why does L. appear not to ever grieve her mother's death? WHy does she not miss her friends? Why is she not cutting up her arms with a piece of broken glass? Why does she have so little to say? After driving around the country in a small car for a year cooped up with the H why has she long ago not throttled him and left his carcass for the vultures to feed on (road tip rage - we've all felt it)?
Where are the authorities, the police?
If HH is so gah gah over her why can he not seem to remember anything specific about her - her interests or conversations? We know plenty about what she smells like, by contrast.
Why does she not act or talk like a 14 year old but instead exactly like HH himself? WHy is she so shadowy, 2 dimensional? At one point I started to wonder if maybe L was HH's deranged hallucination or phantom - which made me slightly warm up to the book - but that doesnt seem to be Nabokov's intent at all.
All of these questions - and many more which I would have to return to the novel to remember (and I have no intention of doing that) - spoiled my 'enjoyment' of the work and interjected a draft of cold wet reality into the fun so that I lost interest.
Nabokov's stylistic brilliance was used only to serve up HH's non-stop sardonic and caustic observations on American middle class life, and they became ennervating over the long long haul. And pleading Nabokov's psychological insights doesnt help much. Is this a comedy, tragedy, psychological portrait? It fails on all those counts because it is tiresome, shallow and obtuse. But I guess I DID learn a lot about motels in middle america in the 50s.
And all the little literary games and such, and the self-serving, classless forwards and afterwards only made it worse.
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