Lolita, one of the best known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature, tells the story of an aging man, Humbert Humbert’s obsessive and doomed passion for the minor Dolores Haze (Lolita).

Dolores, a twelve year old girl, lives with her widowed mother Charlotte who runs a boarding house to support the both of them. Humbert, who has an unhealthy interest in young girls, becomes a boarder and immediately becomes smitten with Dolores. Humbert marries Charlotte in order to stay close to Dolores. When Charlotte discovers Humbert’s dark secret, she runs out of the house in haste and is killed by car, leaving Humbert to raise Dolores by himself.

The incestuous relationship between stepfather and stepdaughter is exposed with beautiful style, prose, and clever linguistic word play that the reader is seduced into reading further regardless of the shocking content and renders this dark tale into an enchanting form.

I would unquestionably recommend this book to bookworms and non-bookworms alike. The overall darkly comic tone and alternating bemused weariness with sweeping romanticism elicited more than a few chuckles out of me at moments generally where sympathy for the victim should be regarded. One will learn, if for anything else, the origin of how the name “Lolita” has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious girl.