Lolita

Wikipedia:

Lolita is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literature scholar born in 1910 in Paris, France, who is obsessed by what he refers to as 'nymphets' (defined as sexually desirable girls between the ages of nine and fourteen). This obsession with young girls appears to have been a result of his failure to consummate an affair with a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh, before her premature death from typhus. Shortly before the start of World War II, Humbert leaves Paris for New York. In 1947 he moves to Ramsdale, a small New England town, to write. When the house in which he is promised a room burns down, he ends up at the door of Charlotte Haze, a widow, who has a sexually charged interpretation of taking in a lodger. As the two make their way through Mrs. Haze's tour of the house, Humbert rehearses different ways of turning her down, but then, after being led out into the garden, he spies Haze's 12-year-old daughter Dolores (variously referred to in the novel as Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo, L) sunbathing in the garden. Humbert, seeing Annabel Leigh in her, is instantly smitten with the daughter and eagerly agrees to rent the room.

When Lolita is at summer camp, Mrs. Haze gives Humbert an ultimatum, that he must marry her (for she has fallen madly in love with him) or move out. He is horrified at first, but sees living with Lolita as his stepdaughter as a way to make her part of his living fantasy. Charlotte appears oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her and his lust for Lolita until she reads his diary records. Horrified and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee with her daughter, writing letters to Humbert, Lolita, and a strict boarding school for young ladies to which she apparently intends to send her daughter. Charlotte confronts Humbert when he returns home, ignoring his protests that the diary entries are just notes for a novel, she bolts from the house to post the letters. Crossing the street, she is struck and killed by a passing motorist. A child retrieves the letters and gives them to Humbert, who destroys them.

Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, telling her that her mother is desperately ill in a hospital, and takes her to The Enchanted Hunters, a hotel of regional repute, where he meets a strange man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert intends to use the sleeping pills on Lolita, but they have little effect. Instead, she seduces Humbert (the first of only two times she is recorded as doing so), and he discovers that he is not her first lover, as she had had a sexual affair at summer camp. After leaving the hotel, Humbert tells the now-troublesome Lolita that her mother is dead. Alone and frightened, Lolita has no choice but to accept Humbert into her life on his terms.

Driving Lolita around the country in Charlotte's car, moving from state to state and motel to motel, Humbert bribes the girl for sexual favours; he falls genuinely in love with her, but is conscious that she is not attracted to him and shares none of his interests. She is, in fact, a very crass and ordinary adolescent, who merely puts up with him and is not above manipulating him sexually when she can. Eventually, the two settle down in another New England town, Beardsley, with Humbert posing as Lolita's father and Lolita enrolled in a private girls' school where the headmistress views Humbert's possessive supervision as that of a strict, old-world European parent.

Humbert nevertheless is persuaded to allow Lolita to take part in a school theatrical club (extracting additional sexual favours from her in exchange for his permission). Ominously, the title of the play -- The Enchanted Hunters -- is identical to the name of the hotel where they first had sex. Lolita is enthusiastic about the play and is said to have impressed the playwright, who attended a rehearsal, but before opening night she and Humbert have a ferocious argument, and she bolts from the house. Found by Humbert a few minutes later, Lolita declares that she wants to immediately leave town and resume their travels. Humbert is delighted, but increasingly guarded as they again drive westward, nagged by a feeling that they are being followed and that Lolita knows who the follower is. He is right. Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's, the nephew of the local dentist in Ramsdale, and the author of the play being performed at Lolita's school, is himself a pedophile and amateur pornographer. He is tailing the couple in accordance with a secret plan of escape devised with Lolita. While Humbert becomes increasingly paranoid, Lolita becomes ill and recuperates in a nearby hospital. One night she checks out with her "uncle", who has paid the hospital bill. Humbert, still clueless as to the identity of Lolita's "abductor", makes farcical and frantic attempts to find them by inspecting various motel-register aliases which have been laced by Quilty with insults and jokes flavored with literary allusions.

During this period, Humbert has a chaotic, two-year love-affair with a petite alcoholic named Rita who, at 30, is 10 years younger than him and a passable physical substitute for Lolita. By 1952, Humbert has settled down as a scholar at a small academic institute. One day, he receives a letter from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, pregnant and in desperate need of funds. Armed with a gun, Humbert, still driving Charlotte's car, visits his young obsession and turns over to her the money she was due from her mother's estate. He also asks her to leave with him, but she refuses. During their conversation, Lolita explains that her husband, a nearly deaf war-veteran and the father of her unborn child, was not her abductor, whereupon Humbert offers to give her all the money he has if she will reveal the man's identity. Lolita complies, saying that she had really loved Clare Quilty, but that he threw her out after she refused to perform in a pornographic film he was making.

Leaving Lolita forever, Humbert surprises Quilty at his mansion. Quilty goes mad when he sees Humbert's gun. After a mutually exhausting struggle for it, Quilty, now insane with fear, merely responds politely as Humbert repeatedly shoots him. He finally dies with a comical lack of interest, expressing his slight concern in an affected English accent. Humbert is left exhausted and disoriented. Arrested for murder, he writes the book he entitles Lolita or, The Confessions of a White Widowed Male, while awaiting trial. According to the novel's fictional "Foreword", Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis upon finishing his manuscript. Lolita dies, during childbirth, on Christmas Day, 1952.

Dasha:

Question: Why does he call her Lolita when her name is Dolores?

above the influence:

Is it a good book? Too complicated?

Bells.:

above the influence:

Is it a good book? Too complicated?

It's quite good, but it's really complexly written. It gets a bit tedious for people who aren't used to that, like me.