Lolita

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Delores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."



This quote I came across online one day compelled me to borrow this book from the library. The book began innocently enough, but as the story progressed, I discovered that this book's protagonist is not in love with a short woman (four feet ten) but with what he calls a "nymphet". This basically means he was a pedophile. "Nymphet" was the term he used for girls in their tween years; still innocent like children but growing into women. This book chronicles his thoughts, his methods for meeting these girls and the success and defeat that he encounters in his sexual pursuits of them. The concept is so chilling, I had to return the book just as he was meeting Lolita, a 9 or 10 year-old daughter of the lady from whom he was renting a room. His initial, hungering description of the girl signaled the end of my desire to read the book; the novel praised by Vanity Fair as "The only convincing love story of our century" left me longing for the romances of yesteryear.