"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

335 pages

Middle-aged "Humbert Humbert" is obsessed with young girls--a certain type of young girls he calls "nymphets." In 1947, he moves from Paris to New England to focus on his writing. There he boards with Charlotte Haze, a single mother to a 12-year-old named Dolores (also called Lolita) whom Humbert immediately becomes infatuated with. He ends up marrying Charlotte just to stay close to Lolita. I won't spoil the rest of the story, but I will say the Humbert's obsession only grows and he proves that he will do anything when it comes to Lolita.

I'll be honest: this book really creeped me out. I picked it up because it's on Modern Library's Top 100 Novels list (actually, it's number 4) and I've been trying to check some of those off my list. I'd vaguely heard that there was a pedophile in it, but I didn't realize that Humbert's obsession is basically the whole story (yeah, I know, pretty ignorant for a librarian). I guess I'm missing something that most people get out of it, but it pretty much just disturbed me. I had to skim a lot. I thought it was interesting to get the perspective of crazy Humbert, but I still didn't feel a connection with him or any of the other characters. Perhaps some of you read it better than I did and got more out of it...