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Book Title: Lolita
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Genre: romance
Rating: 4/5

Summary (from Amazon.co.uk): The novel that first established Nabokov's reputation with a large audience tour-de-force of comic satire on sex and the American ways of life.

My thoughts: This was one of those books that if it wasn't for the Book Club event, on a Portuguese message board, I would never read, not because of its theme but the book never caught my attention, even though it has a major influence on the pop culture.

In this book we follow the story of Humbert Humbert, as told by him, of what happened to him and how he came to be in jail. Humbert tells how he has a trauma because of a love that was never fulfilled in sexual terms, and that might have led him to be attracted to "nymphets" whose Humbert describes:

Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets”.

Then we meet the 12 year old "nymphet" who attracted him the most, Dolores or Lolita, to the point of obsession, or even, perhaps, love.

It's clear the attempts of Humbert to justify his attraction, even to take off him the blame of his actions towards Lolita. It was here that the discussion was heavier. Was Lolita such an innocent child? Can we blame Humbert for his liking, when in the past other figures (named by him) showed the same inclination? When there were royal marriages in which the betrothed showed such a huge age difference? This book raises many questions from a moral point of view that are still valid today. Nabokov's beautiful writing also invites to think as it's so involving that only thinking about what we read can we come to a more clear position on the subject. Many times I found myself pending towards Humbert's side while reading, but then, thinking better about it, I would go against him and my previous thought on the matter.

The story, however, seems to lose some enthusiasm from a specific point, the second part, with the author repeating himself with some frequency. Still, is an interesting book, as it presents us a world that had just came out of a war and in which sexuality was getting attention and was being debated. There's also a critic to psychiatry which Humbert (or Nabokov through such character) seems to despise.