I refuse to give this one star, on the grounds that the writing itself is excellent - Nabokov certainly knows how to turn a phrase. If only he could have understood texture, because this is the same consistency all through.

Look, the subject matter is revolting. Humbert is a paedophile rapist, but he is also the most one-note character I've read for quite a while. He is a small man and an evil one, but in a fictional character small and evil are no barriers to interest. There are plenty of small and evil men who are fascinating to read about. He is not one, because added to the smallness and the evilness is sheer fucking tedium. He whines and whines and whines all the way through the book, more obsessed with his own feelings than he ever is with Lolita or hers. It is 300+ pages of absolute consistency, and the homogeneity of it was so crushingly dull that it took me days and days to read because, once the first shock of unpleasantness was over, it was all the same. I am reminded of a mosquito at night: the small sensation of the bite, and then that endless, unwavering drone.

Perhaps the small whining could have held my interest had this book been cut down to novella size, but as it is, it felt much longer - so much painfully longer - than its relatively low page count would suggest.