For a book that gets such rave reviews, I am not raving yet. Who exactly decided that Fyodor
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment should be a classic? Huge error in judgment in my opinion, but what do I know? I spend 40% of my time online looking at
pictures of puppies… so yea, not really one to judge.
But I really, honestly, cannot for the life of me get through this book. CANNOT. It’s been weeks and I’m at a pitiful 26% of completion. For some reason I assumed that Crime and Punishment would be similar to Lolita, swapping pedophilia for murder. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy reading a book centered on pedophilia, and I was wrong; I was hoping to be wrong again about murder.
So far, to my immense disappointment, being inside the head of a murderer has not been quite as enjoyable as I would have hoped. In fact, it’s been downright creepy and disturbing, and has sent me running at full speed into the arms of feel-good favorites, Like Water for Chocolate, 84, Charing Cross Road and Tuesdays with Morrie. Perhaps I will take this as a sign of my sanity and likely low-scoring murder-tendency behavior.
I was pretty relieved when I finished Lolita last week. What can I say, reading about pedophilia just wasn’t my idea of a good time. I mean, honestly, what kind of sick person actually wants to read about some delusional middle-aged man that has sexual relations with a “girl-child”? Certainly not someone like me…
This week, however, I found my thoughts frequently reverting back to the book. In some weird, twisted and mysterious way, I missed Lolita. I missed the first person narrative style, I missed Humbert Humbert’s insane thought process, I missed the secrets, the lies, the absurdity of it all.
Hmmm… who would’ve thought?
My Kindle tells me that I’m 57% through Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous novel Lolita and friends, I am really starting to cringe. I knew going into this that the book would be difficult to stomach, but this is definitely much more than even I had bargained for.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, Lolita is about a middle-aged man who becomes obsessed and sexually involved with a 12-year old girl. It is sick, it is disgusting and it is exactly why I will, without a doubt in my mind, turn into that psycho control-freak mom that kids love to hate. I’ve already seen a glimpse of my own extreme paranoia and panic-of-the-heart while “supervising” my teenage sister, and it is not pretty.
I apologize to my potential offspring now for spying on them, putting tracking devices on their clothes, forbidding all sleepovers, and restricting night time excursions past 8pm (6pm in the Winter time when it gets dark early).
… And they have Vladimir Nabokov to thank for that!
