´´Nabokov: His psycho-funny masterpiece´´ By Andrés Rubio (review from ´´Lolita´´. Nabokov, Vladimir 1959.)

★★★★★´´Nabokov: His psycho-funny masterpiece´´
By Andrés Rubio on October 24, 2013

 This review is from ´´Lolita´´. Nabokov, Vladimir 1959.

Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-born novelist born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. His real success came to him when he started to write novels in English; being Lolita his most famous novel.

5 stars. Definitely this classic of modern literature and pop culture is what it deserve, not only because the controversial story that made the critics talk a lot, it’s the modern and unique style used by Nabokov that make the reader to not stop until reach the last page.

When I decided to read this book, it was because I read an article about writers that made wonders when they started to write in another language foreign to their born countries. Nabokov was one of these examples of ´´wonder writers´´. So I was guided for the curiosity and then I get an old version printed in 1970 with a very peculiar prologue. I say it was peculiar because it was written on the mid-seventies, and society didn´t conceive the idea of a novel about a forty years old man falling in love with a twelve years old girl.

The story is told by Humbert Humbert, the main character of the book. He was a normal Parisian man who for some reason in his twisted mind develops an obsession for the little girls starting with the death of his first teenage lover, who died of sickness.  For Annabelle’s dead, he tried to found her on other young girls, but never found someone who really could compare with her. He named the little girls of his obsession ´´nymphets´´ explaining that they have a part angelical, a part demoniac side that is inside their girl’s body. During the book he manages his pedophilia like something normal and spontaneous. Even though its obsession he got married with a woman named Valeria that cheated on him with a Russian old-man. When he got divorced he moved to the United States and for destiny tricks the first house where he was supposedly going to live burned. So he finished living on a house of a widow woman called Ms. Haze. When she was showing to him the house he was definitely thinking to not live there, but, when she was showing to him the garden he met ´´Lo´´, Ms. Haze little daughter.  Humbert was shocked when he saw that ´´nymphet´´ and started since that moment to memorize and to describe every face and movement that little ´´Lo´´ made. Then he decided to live there. Lolita like all the little girls was stubborn and always was disobeying her mother, so that why her mother decided to send her to a camp. That day when Ms. Haze was taking Lolita to the camp left a note to Humbert saying to him that she was deeply in love with him and that when she returned when the camp she wanted to marry him, if not, he must left the house after reading the note. He stays, but just for Lolita. Humbert as a writer he enjoyed writing a lot about Lolita and wrote about his new wife and a very evil woman who treated badly the poor girl. One day she found the scripts and argued with him then she ran out of the street and died hit by a car. The Humbert went to the camp to pick up his now step-daughter Dolores. He didn’t say to her that her mother was dead until a few days passed. The Humbert and Lolita started to travel between fights and reconciliations. They started some kind of romance where Humbert didn´t notice the pain that he was giving to the little girl.

So here is where the story will get more intense at the point that Humbert Humbert shows his dark-side human nature that showed us that he would make the impossible to keep Lolita with him and never let her go.

I fully recommend this book because the author manages his main character´s psychology and thoughts at a level you can feel that Humber Humbert really existed and you are reading his personal diary. That is a good thing that show us that the most valuable and interesting thing in Nabokov´s masterpiece is its main character ´´charisma´´ that in a moment of the reading you will find yourself sympathizing with him and see it all by his twisted mind. You will understand his rationalized behavior through his life that made you think that his way of seeing the world is correct and right. So, go on and find by yourself the mystery of Lolita´s story and mental background.