About a third of the way in and I'm disgusted and captivated. Europerv who emigrates to the US after WWII and is just egregiously horny for his childhood crush who died when they were kids. Marries into a widowed family to get at her daughter, plots the mothers death so he can have his way with the daughter who he projets his pedophilic love onto. Well-written, but vile. Would not really recommend.

I know the worst is yet to come

8

"Oh, winged gentleman of the jury,..." he's defending himself before god even though he knows he's wrong.

The way that he describes the depraved exercise that he schemes about, for most of the book, is oddly poetic. Unnervingly so – he mostly refuses to actually acknowledge the vulgarity of the action that he commits, though he does frequently refer to himself as wretched, though not villainous,.

Still an 7.75

More lollygagging around the whole country, tense scenes, coming of age and Lolita devilishly insinuating her full comprehension of what's going on and, for some reason, indulging in the incest.

H.H. continues to plead with the jury and allude to the fact that he's writing his testimony before sentencing for the sake of psychoanalysis. He muses about impregnating Lolita soon such that she might give birth to another nymphet, and maybe Lolita II might birth still a third nymphet before he becomes impotent.

last quarter is a solid 9.

similar to Borderlands villain writing at the end, with similar monologues as Carrion Comfirt that reek of malice moreso than trope.

What a grotesque novel

Nabokov's own reviews of the novel:

Lolita is a special favorite of mine. It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real.

I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.

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