Reader discretion is advised for Lolita, and I highly suggest reading up on potential trigger warnings if this content is not something that you are comfortable reading about in the book or in this review. This review does contain mild spoilers for Lolita.
Lolita's reputation for decades has been followed by controversy, taboo, and intense conversation. The novel's film adaption did not help this discussion, as Humbert's thoughts and narrative should have been kept to the page - creating a film of the very topic made Humbert as an unreliable narrator turn into something that Nabokov never intended for this story.
I have to say that I was definitely on the fence about even owning this book, let alone reading it, after hearing for years about the debate that has been going on for decades - does this book romanticize the "relationship" between Humbert and Dolores? We begin the book with Humbert in jail, for crimes that we automatically assume must be related to this character, Lolita, whom we have yet to meet but already have an idea of who she is - except for her name. Humbert's thoughts and storytelling are contradictory and calculated as he describes what his life has become and recounts his life before Dolores enters it, and how he came to be involved in her life.
Right off the bat, we know that Humbert is a character that we are rightfully disgusted by - he tells the reader of his various encounters with young girls and the obsessive thoughts and feelings he has towards them. Nabokov has Humbert cut right to the chase of what type of person Humbert is, and as a reader, you are find yourself struggling to get through these early pages of description and detail of Humbert's thoughts. The way that Humbert describes the girls he encounters and the girls he only sees in the streets or in passing has the reader questioning if they should even continue with the story, hoping that whatever they're about to read about Humbert and Dolores does not cross into this territory with a twenty-foot pole.
Dolores is a young, twelve-year-old girl who is quite the opposite of the "nymphet" that Humbert constantly refers to her as - she is simply a child with a child's attitude and outlook on life. Humbert takes everything that Dolores does and warps the meaning behind it to fit into the narrative he has created in his mind. Dolores is acting out towards her mother and delays their picnic? Humbert believes she is doing this to tease him. He creates these encounters in his mind in which he and Dolores are living a life together and doing unspeakable things together. Nabokov writes Humbert with the ability to speak directly to the reader, where he attempts to justify his thoughts and tries to change the reader's view of his actions. But with the knowledge that we have about Humbert, it is impossible for us to ever see his side, because it is simply wrong in every way. He deserves no remorse, no compassion, and certainly no justification.
Humbert agonizes when Dolores is away from him, and blames everyone, even Dolores at times, for when his plans are thwarted from going his way. Her mother wants to send her to school far away, and Humbert does everything in his power to change this course of action. So much so, that he ends up marrying her to ensure that he stays close to Dolores. When Dolores's mother passes away, Humbert does not even initially tell her what has happened, he instead takes her away to a motel or something like the such, and prolongs telling her so that he may live in a world where it is just him and Dolores in his own fantasy.
After the reveal of her mother's death, we see Dolores change in character - or do we? Our unreliable narrator tries to paint a picture of an antagonizing Dolores that provokes Humbert at every chance, along with being sexually suggestive towards him. In reality, the reader knows that this is not actually happening, that it is Humbert combining the reality that he and Dolores live in with the fantasy of her that he has spent months formulating and building upon.
We get very few fleeting moments of Dolores actually acting as a character rather than the object of Humbert's obsession, and even when we do, her words are not her own. They are the words that Humbert has given to her in order to satisfy his thoughts. This was expected, as the reader is only being fed information through Humbert, and while he tries to plead his case and give explanations for what he believed to have happened, it is obvious that anything that Dolores says or does once it is only her and Humbert is not actually Dolores, but Humbert's mind.
Seeing Humbert slowly fall into an even deeper obsession with Dolores once she becomes older was deeply uncomfortable to read. He continues to talk directly to the reader, consistently telling us that it is in fact Dolores who is responsible for the way he is, instead of himself. While Humbert does acknowledge in the beginning and end of the story that these thoughts are his own, he spends the almost the entirety trying to convince the reader that Dolores is responsible for his responses. His obsession with Dolores is doomed from the start - it is not only deeply disturbing and unsettling, but watching it unfold into some type of cat and mouse chase at the end makes the reader hope that Humbert will never see Dolores again. Even the idea of him knowing what is going on in her life was too much for me to imagine - he does not deserve to know what becomes of her and her future.
Nabokov's writing style, filled with French phrases that only emphasize the story and its characters, is able to create such an unlikable character out of Humbert. We know he is the unreliable narrator and that we should not believe a word he says, yet we continue to "listen" to the story he is telling us - we have to know what happens to him in the end. I obviously do not condone the way Humbert acted towards Dolores and the lengths that he took to stay in her life - he is a gross human being and no redemption for him is in his future.
A controversial classic, Lolita captivates the reader as we try to untangle Humbert's thoughts and decide what is true and what is obsession.
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