The Slimyest Slime Some Slime Can Be

Wow!  Did you guess by the title of this blog entry that this is what I was talking about?  I'm sorry if you did, because that would mean that you have read this awful book.  To be clear, the way this book was written is brilliant.  The narrative just flows and actually reminds me of one of my favorite writers George Orwell, who was also quite good in sweeping you along into the story, no matter how awful the subject, so Nabokov was quite successful in doing this.  Despite the nausea and disgust evoked I had to read on to see how it would all end.  That being said, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.  I hated this story, I hated the protagonist, and I hated Lolita (and her mother too!).  What a bunch of awful, selfish, spiteful people.
Maybe that is what is looked at as good essential reading (Lolita is on the 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die list), the author who can get inside a character's head and illustrate in successful fashion the humanity (weak as it is in this instance) of that person, show all of their warts in as ugly a way as possible.  The perverseness of the mother-daughter relationship hit a bit too close to home for me, which disturbed me all the more because Nabokov was so dang accurate, which means he had met or experienced or heard of people like this.
I want to read something else of Nabokov's sometime this year because I like his writing,  so lets hope with a less repulsive subject he is as brilliant as I suspect he is.