[kirklancaster]

Originally Posted by Z

I just finished reading Lolita and I must say it was nothing like what I thought it would be - it was a really compelling read of course but it was quite interesting to get an insight into the mind of a paedophile and be forced to empathise with him (if not sympathise - definitely a grey area)... I think it's brilliant the way Nabokov builds up to Humbert and Dolores' first sexual encounter and thereafter the sheer patheticness of Humbert's attempts to control her and how over time she treats him as nothing more than an annoyance while he desperately tries to control her... Definitely one of the last remaining literary taboos I think, discussing paedophilia, because obviously it evokes quite a strong reaction and is deemed as too perverse to discuss. Really, the book is about the mental health of a man who, to almost anyone else, would have appeared perfectly normal. It's interesting to read that you could interpret his account as either being factual, i.e. Dolly really was disinterested and over it, or you could dismiss that as him playing down the abusive childhood he gives this poor girl and how he ruins her life and causes her to run away from him to someone just as bad and so on... cycle of abuse etc.

Has anyone else read this classic? I'm looking for something new to read, hoping to find something just as thought provoking, any suggestions?

It's years since I first read Lolita and about 10 years since I re-read it.

Have you read 'Last Exit To Brooklyn' by Hubert Selby Jr.? Or 'Our Lady of the Flowers' by Jean Genet?

Both disturbed me a little when I was a young man.