By Katie Magee
Tuesday evening, while vacuuming the store’s forest green carpets after closing time, I began thinking about what reading means to me. “Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had to come back to the real world,” writes Haruki Marukami in his novel 1Q84. Way to go Marukami, you just said it all. For me reading is an escape. I enjoy reading things I simply cannot relate to, thus creating a beautiful escape from my everyday life…just a thought.
One escape I have thoroughly enjoyed recently is Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. This novel tells the story of a middle-aged man, Humbert Humbert, who goes to live with a widow, Charlotte, and her twelve-year-old daughter, Lolita, in a sleepy New England town. From the moment Humbert lays eyes on Lolita, he is immediately infatuated. Eventually marrying Charlotte in order to get closer to Lolita, Humbert proves his determination for an extremely racy relationship with a girl three quarters his age. Humbert will stop at nothing to have the relationship he wants with Lolita and seems conflicted about it throughout the entire book. Lolita, however, makes the first advance towards Humbert. As their relationship proceeds, it is hard to tell who is leading the way and who, if anyone, is really in the wrong.
Upon telling one of my friends (who absolutely LOVES this book) that I was reading it, she mentioned that it is very hard to trust anything the narrator, Humbert, says. This book does a remarkable job of challenging the reader to read between the lines and find the real truth. The entire book is a question, but one of the main questions surrounding it is whether Humbert truly loved Lolita. Before reading the book, most people would assume that he does not and could not honestly love her in a sincere, romantic way. I suppose this question is for each reader to ponder in his or her own way and maybe come to a conclusion… or maybe not.
This is a story of murder and kidnap, a story of betrayal and love. Humbert’s soul is poured out on every page, thus touching our very own. A love story of a very unique kind, Lolita will have you in an emotional labyrinth… and the prose is beautiful.
“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.”
Comments are closed.