Lolita

I was told that it was a beautifully grotesque novel; a horrible story told epically poetic. That as the main character fell in love with the twelve-year old nymphet, the reader was equally romanced. That it was the great seduction. Even the back of the book had a quote endorsing it as the only believable love story ever written. Hardly the case.

While being wonderfully eloquent, I never believed it was love. It was a journey of distasteful imagination for the narrator, and I know this is exactly accurate because the last several chapters proved it. The last several chapters proved me right for not believing the narrator's perversions; and in fact, it was this, the last several chapters, that made the first few hundred pages beautiful. Nabokov made me believe with absolute certainty in remorse.