Lolita Is honestly one of the most tragic, hilarious, and above all beautifully written books I've ever read. I find it difficult to believe that not only was Nabokov not a native speaker of English, but that this was his first English-language novel. I myself am British, and not one to romanticise Americana, but the picture Nabokov paints of the States' landscape honours the beauty and culture of the land to an extent that is almost painful. Even more painful, however, is the slow defilement of the titular character. Although she seems, at first, mature for her age and curious about the prospect of an adult lover, we watch her descend into honest depression and grief as soon as the novelty wears off. As a sidenote, I truly do not understand anybody who somehow interprets this novel as pro-pedophilia. Not only can the reader pick up on the sense of pain, but the narrator himself spends the last act of the book consumed by shame and realises the error of his deeds. This aside, I admire deeply Nabokov's balancing of the horror of this book's themes and his ceaseless symbolism and metaphor with honest humour. The surrealty of the novel's events (notably the deaths of Humbert's mother and Charlotte) did draw a laugh out of my stone cold heart. The terrible names also inspired a chuckle.
Humbert Humbert, professional pretentious European, is a nonce. He fancies a particular type of girl: aged 8-14, and with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that makes her, in his view, a 'nymphet'. He, being -once again- pretentious, explains this through psychoanalysing his relation to a girl he loved at around that age, who he was never quite able to shag. In his 'youth' he tries his very hardest to fulfill his unique sexual urges without actually daring to rape a child. He works lightly as an academic and marries a woman for whom he feels nothing for until she leaves him to marry a salt-of-the-earth Pole who loves her.
He eventually ends up moving to America, where through a series of shocking events, he ends up lodging in the home of one Charlotte Haze, along with troubesome daughter Dolores. Twelve-year-old Dolores (aka Lolita) immediately catches Humbert's eye as the most beautiful of all nymphets. He spends his time obsessing over her and cultivating a paternal relationship, all while spying on her when scantly dressed, and even having an orgasm with her on his lap. He documents all this in a diary. Soon though, Charlotte sends her beloathed daughter off to summer camp, much to H.H.'s dismay, and she then confesses her love for the protagonist. Hoping to avoid her suspicions, Humbert marries her, and sows rumours in the town that he is the biological father of Lolita. Eventually, his deceit comes to an end as Charlotte finds the diary, but then promptly dies. Our grieving widow takes this oppurtunity to pull Lolita from her summercamp and take her on a two-year-long roadtrip.
Humbert, early on in their journey, at an inn named 'The Enchanted Hunters', plans to drug and rape Lolita in her sleep, but fails as he has been sold phoney sleep pills. No matter, since upon her awakening, he discovers that Lolita has lost her virginity at camp, and is as interested in sex as a given twelve year old can be. Naturally, he takes the oppurtunity to rape her, and for the remainder of their fun filled voyage, he rapes her seemingly every night. By day, they visit every movie theatre and minor attraction the nation has to offer. By night, they find whichever motel is nearest and Humbert guilts his reluctant stepdaughter into fucking him. Somewhere on the line, he admits that Charlotte is dead. They eventually settle on the East coast, across the entirety of the nation from Lo's home, where she is enrolled in a school and Humbert becomes a professor. Lolita by this point is incredibly sick of the whole business of being raped night after night by a man with nothing to offer her but empty pleasure. Humbert loves her consumingly, but knows noting about her beyond her body and surface-level demeanor.
At school she makes female friends, some of whom her 'father' lusts after, and has a few carefully limited affairs with boys, whom he envies. The culmination of her brief normal-ish life comes when she enrolls in her school play, ironically named 'Enchanted Hunters' by her favourite cinematographer, Clare Quilty. Just before this is performed, however, she has a screaming row with her abuser and attempts to escape him. Humbert resolves to hit the road with her once again, but this time he is consumed by the anxiety that he is being followed by a man who looks like his uncle.
Humbert does everything in his power to escape this pursuer, while Lolita seemingly aims to protect him. He questions whether this is truly an incredibly resilient pursuer or simply his own paranoid delusions. Nevertheless, he continues to rape his beloved Lolita with great joy, even as she grows from a nymphet into a young woman. This continues until Lo becomes so terribly ill that he has no choice but to take her to the hospital, where upon release she immediately runs off with Humbert's mysterious foil.
Heartbroken, Humbert spends years searching for his beloved Lolita. Her kidnapper is just as pretentious as him, and has managed to leave cryptic clues in the guestbooks of seemingly every hotel in the United States. He couples with an alcoholic woman named Rita, but only loves Lolita. Eventually, he returns to her childhood home, where he finds that she has written; she is 18, newly married, pregnant, and asking for a loan.
He travels to her house to give her an inordinate sum of money and converse with her. She learns that all those years ago she ran off with her favourite moviemaker, and playwright behind 'the Enchanted Hunters' Clare Quilty. Eventually, she realised that he, too, was a massive pervert, seemingly even worse than our protagonist, and left him. Her current husband seems a decent type. Humbert asks her for a final time, in spite of her maturity, whether she wants to run away with him, which she strongly refuses. His heart broken once again, H.H. finds Quilty and, after an attempted power trip and far too much struggle than it should take to kill a drugged old man, managed to kill him and leave. Quilty is not missed. In his final reflection, humbert takes to the roads once more, and realises the error in his ways. He corrupted a young child with no real reason beyond his own lusts, and though this memoir was meant to save him from prison, he concludes that he was as guilty as could be. He asks for the writings to be distributed after Lolita's death, so as to share his story without further harm to her, while he dies in prison of a heart condition. Tragically, Lolita dies in short succession, on Christmas day, giving birth to her stillborn daughter.