Rating: 
Summary: "deadly little demon" - anything BUT empty
Review: Those who say Lolita is an empty book did not really pay attention to it as they read it. At 16 years old you already think you know everything and there is nothing new to impress you. This is neither criticism, nor an insult, just a fact. You will find out differently later in life.
Lolita brings out many themes. There is the obvious like representation of the dark side of humanity. There is also a statement of the rape of Western culture, done quietly, discreetly by an older, more influential, more sophisticated Europe. There are elements of Europe's traditions, Europe's reluctance to let modern America be, the desire to change it, and modern America's seduction power and obsession with flash and glamour in society, sex, and pop culture. There is also the older generation trying to regin in and control the younger generation who is trying to break away, but can't do that without the older's influence and guidance however misled it may be. There are domination issues in relationships that ultimately lead to their own destruction and death. The language is ensnaring (just look at the first few lines - really hear them): "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta." The opening chapter is devoted to her name. It's poignant and beautifully sculpted. Nabokov's intricately woven word play through the dark and sardonic Quilty is brilliant and tense as he subtly lets Humbert know that he's aware of what's going on with Lolita, even though he's a stranger: "Where the devil did you get her?"
"Who's the lassie?"
"My daughter."
"You lie - she's not."
"What?"
"I said July was hot."
Quilty doesn't want Lolita per se; he wants the power over Humbert, the power to crush the fantasy, the power to seduce the lover away. And the word games he plays with Humbert on the hotel registries are cold and wonderfully calculated. Quilty is a representation of humanity's deceptions, failures, and the uncanny ability to justify it all according to need and offering no apologies. If you like Shakespeare, you should pick up on the allusions to the Bard's works, particularly Hamlet. Not to mention the allusions to Poe, and numerous other authors. There are allusions to the art of madness. There are psychoanalytical elements at every turn. This novel is an English major's bliss. It's eloquent, powerful, and so delicious. The style is fluid and captivating. If you walk away from Lolita stating you haven't gotten the least little thing from it, you didn't really read it. I recommend the novel highly. I recommend reading the annotations after reading the novel straight through. Anyone can read Shakespeare with Clif Notes (not bashing Will; I love him) as long as they just want to skim the surface for the basic idea and claim to know what it all means, but it takes true intellect to contemplate Nabokov because his works are involved and there is so much to see. I say this not to discourage anyone or make it seem as though reading Lolita is impossible without a degree of some sort (quite the contrary), just that you shouldn't read this expecting not to think about it. If you want to grow in the world of literature, this is a novel that will help you do that. Nabokov created a fulfilling novel, haunting, rich with dark, humorous, and poetic tapestry as Humbert attempts to immortalize his nymphet and himself.
Rating: 
Summary: It's an empty book.
Review: "What about the theme of 'old Europe' vs. 'young America,' American modernization, generation clashes, pop culture, love and romance, betrayal. You missed all that and more. No, you don't have to like the book, but you didn't pick up what the book really was about and maybe that's why you didn't like it."
-a reader
Yes, what about them? I got about as much TRUE intellectual satisfaction from Lolita as I did from Michael Crichton's Timeline, something I was forced to read last year in English. I, at 16, did not feel as though I learned anyting new on those subjects from this book.
Nabokov's style is annoying.
If you want technical mastery with profundity check out Joyce, Faulkner, Pound, Shakespeare, or any number of other, much better writers. I haven't read anything else by Nabokov, but Lolita was stultifying. I'm about to check out Pnin, though.
So you know, Dostoevsky is my favorite author.
I think a reading of Lolita would be well balanced by some good Bible reading afterward.
Rating:
Summary: in response to "inferior story"
Review: (I gave this book two stars compared to other pieces of literary fiction - I'm not saying it's as good as Al Franken's book, which I gave three stars. When rating books, I keep in mind the genre.)
Nabokov is a superior writer for the reasons that Appel mentions in his detailed notes: his allusions to other works, the book being a parody of itself, effective use of foreshadowing, putting the author's fingerprint on the narrative, the double, and all of the other literary techniques. In the end though, the story is lousy. A 13-year-old girl is getting raped and I couldn't care and it's not because I sympathized with her tormentor either. Does that make me a bad person? Perhaps. Does it make Nabokov a lousy storyteller? In this instance, yes.
I just couldn't care about the characters. The book took me two years to read - I kept putting it down to read another novel. I wasn't expecting - and didn't want - an erotic thriller. That's what late-night Showtime is for. If the point of the novel was to make a story about pedophilia mundane, than Nabokov succeed. It still doesn't mean it's a good book. (Some of the other reviews here sound as if they gave the book a good rating just because it's been deemed a classic.)
As a former English major, I've read many classic novels. Read this one if you are interested in the technical aspects of writing. Examining Nabokov's approach will make you a better writer. Don't read it because you are looking for a classic that tells a good story though - check out Joyce, Steinbeck, or Fitzgerald for that need.
Go ahead - say this review wasn't helpful too. God forbid someone actually has a negative opinion of this book.
Rating:
Summary: They don't get better than this.
Review: When I was a young man and first encountered Lolita I was pleasantly taken with the audacity of the good Professor Vladimir Nabokov's intent. Like most undergraduates it was clear to me that "shocking the bourgeoisie" was always good sport. Now that some decades have passed and I have had the opportunity to re-read the novel and then to read it a third time with the insights provided by Professor Alfred Appel's annotations, I can only say, it is a singular pleasure and a troubling experience.Lolita is everything a great novel should be, challenging us intellectually, disturbing us emotionally, leading us to fascination and revulsion, making us question our values and our preconceptions while compelling us to turn the pages. A close and sober reading leaves one feeling a kind of tristesse, as the French say, that cannot be easily dismissed. On the one hand, the conception and development of the novel is brilliant. The language is Joycean, the ironies delicious, the plot twists delightful, the theme compelling, the characters indelible, the milieu veracious On the other hand, the "unreliable narrator"--I never liked that term: he's reliable; he just isn't admirable--who is the novel's central character, Humbert Humbert, the Old World dirty middle-aged man taking sexual advantage of a child whom he has trapped, is without doubt a vile creature. And yet--and this is part of the genius of the novel--one cannot help but identify with his tainted love, his hopeless, doomed passion. And indeed one even identifies with the task he has perversely inherited, that of looking after a teenaged girl and keeping her out of harm's way, a formidable task with which almost any parent can identify. (Part of the dramatic irony throughout the novel stems from Humbert's dual role as lover and parent. Something to think about.) What one cannot abide, of course, is Humbert's obsessive jealousy and his overbearing attempts at psychological dominance. Why is it that "normal" men do not fall in love with young girls (to say nothing of pre-adolescent "nymphets")? Why is it that one loves them without falling in love with them? Is it not "wise" in an evolutionary sense to be there first, so to speak? No doubt the evolutionary mechanism demands that drive in some of us, but at what cost, and in the modern society, to what end? Normal men do not chase after pre-adolescent girls partly because it is against the law, and partly because society condemns those that do, and partly because older girls are more interesting, but most often simply because such a relationship would never work. The intense, masochistic, obsessive love that Hum feels for little Lo is all there is of permanence in such a relationship. When that is gone, there is nothing left. "Dollie" must go her own way, make her own life, and Humbert must go back to his books and his lurking by school yards. Lolita at twelve is not capable of loving Humbert. By the time she is sixteen she is bored with him. And by the time she is an adult he is an embarrassment, a skeleton in the closet of her former life. So we know as we begin Nabokov's mid-century masterpiece that Humbert's love is doomed. We also fear that something terrible is going to happen to Lolita because she is being robbed of her adolescence and forced into a kind of physical and emotional servitude. Note well the entrance of Claire Quilty, the libertine, who is part foil to Humbert and part the embodiment of the moral abyss that one may fall into. Indeed Quilty is the horror that Humbert Humbert himself might very well become, which is why his hatred for Quilty is so intense, accentuating as Quilty does the extent of Humbert's perversion. Note that Quilty fulfills (offstage and after the fact, as it were) our worst fears for Lolita. Humbert addresses Quilty as one addresses the hated parts of one's very soul. But enough. The word limit here prevents a full critical treatment of Lolita. For those interested there is Harold Bloom's collection of critical essays, Interpretations of Lolita (1987), to read. You might also want to look at my reviews of the non-annotated edition of the novel and at my reviews of the two very interesting films based on Nabokov's work, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962) and Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1997). My intention here is to recommend this edition because of the light shed on the text by Professor Appel's gloss, especially his translations of the many French phrases that Humbert (who is a professor of European literature, as was Nabokov, one notes in passing) sprinkles throughout the story. I would also like to correct an error in a review below in which it is asserted that Professor Appel is actually Professor Nabokov in camouflage (perhaps like a butterfly). While annotating his own novel in pseudonym is something that Nabokov might very well do and do with delight, I must point out that Appel does indeed exist (at least he has a Website) and of course Professor Nabokov is dead, and so the reviewer is mistaken.
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