My Review for Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Read by Jeremy Irons

Lolita was January’s read for an online Classics Book Club. I began by listening to the audiobook, read by the amazing Jeremy Irons who narrated it brilliantly. I started just after Christmas while working on my Harry Potter diamond art. Talk about diverse! From fantasy witches and wizards to a classic from a Russian/American novelist.

To be completely honest, I rarely read a synopsis of a book before I dive in and I had zero idea what Lolita was about before I put those AirPods in. There were a lot of ‘what the hell am I listening to’ moments until I finally settled into the story. I switched towards the end and read the final third from my beautiful Penguin Clothbound copy. I know that people’s views and reviews of Lolita vary, and are sometimes contentious, but there can be no mistaking the beauty of the imagery which Nabokov portrays. 

Lolita, despite the difficult subject matter, was exquisitely written. There were many,

many words that I didn’t understand, but I was too invested to take the time to look them up and it absolutely didn’t matter and it didn’t detract from my thorough enjoyment of the story.

I can’t say that I actually liked any of the characters. Humbert Humbert is our protagonist who is telling the reader his story from inside a prison cell, although he hasn’t been convicted yet. Lolita/Dolores is Humbert’s nymphet, his twelve-year-old obsession. Did she seduce him, or was it the other way around? I think that depends on the reader and I’ll leave that for you to decide. Regardless, though, what Humbert did in kidnapping and having sex with the underage Lolita was ultimately a crime and I guess explains why the book was banned in several countries for a few years.

I recommend that if you are thinking of reading Lolita, then you check out the trigger warnings first.

Thank you to #classiclitbookclub for choosing Lolita as January’s read. It’s been a great start to 2024.

About the Book

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A tortured soul or a monster? Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.

About Vladimir

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.

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Favourite Book Quotes

 Favourite Book Quotes

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." This is the first line from 'Rebecca' by Daphne Du Maurier and is my most loved book ever. I can honestly say, that apart from Enid Blyton books when I was a child, it is the only book I have read more than once.

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

I can't remember ever having read Anne of Green Gables but I love this quote so much. It brings fresh joy and hopes into your life and if you've had a bad day, then there is always tomorrow.

Anne Shirley is an eleven-year-old orphan who has hung on determinedly to an optimistic spirit and a wildly creative imagination through her early deprivations. She erupts into the lives of ageing brother and sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a girl instead of the boy they had sent for. Thus begins a story of transformation for all three; indeed the whole rural community of Avonlea comes under Anne's influence in some way. We see her grow from a girl to a young woman of sixteen, making her mistakes, and not always learning from them. Intelligent, hot-headed as her own red hair, unwilling to take a moral truth as read until she works it out for herself, she must also face grief and loss and learn the true meaning of love.

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