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Title: Lo's Diary by Pia Pera, Ann Goldstein, John Ray ISBN: 0-9643740-1-3 Publisher: Foxrock Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.9 (21 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Controversial, yes; praiseworthy, no.
Comment: I find it exceedingly pompous of Pia Pera to fancy herself a master of prose comparable to Nabokov. Reading "Lolita" itself alongside "Lo's Diary" shows that Pera, for the most part, fails miserably in her attempt to shed new insight into the character of Dolores Maze (aka Haze.) In addition, the aforementioned maturity of voice lends incredulity to the book, as no authentic twelve-year-old, no matter how precocious, could write a diary with language like that. All in all the book was a letdown, though it does get deliciously catty at times. Its beginning chapters shone above its dreary middle and ultimately dull denouement.
Rating: 4
Summary: Amusing read;
Comment: Lo's Diary is Lolita (Delores Haze's) side of the events that Humbert Humbert told in Lolita. Once again, John Ray is presented with a manuscript this time from the hands of the famed nymphet herself.
She tells Mr. Ray that some of the details of Lolita were just over-romanticized lies thought up by Humbert, but then she sort of recants and decides that maybe Humbert was so deluded he really thought those things happened. So, we learn the "true" story of what happened starting with Lolita's diary a few months before Humbert Humbert entered the picture.
I really, really disliked Humbert Humbert while reading Lolita, and I don't think I was supposed to like him. This book was quite a jewel since Lolita's assessment of Humbert coincides with they way I felt he really was in Lolita, a bumbling fool.
This wasn't written in the same style as Nabokov's Lolita. This is quite a bit more down-to-earth. You don't have to go through pages and pages of description about one minute detail. Lo just tells it like it is. Sometimes, Lolita seems a little too mature for her age, and sometimes she seems a little childish, just as she's presented in Lolita, though. I thought it was an amusing read.
Rating: 3
Summary: Entertaining on one level, but mostly drek.
Comment: It's revoltingly unfaithful to Nabokov's original text.
The "real" names and so forth- Goatscreek, Dolores Maze, Gerry Sue Filthy- are hokey and rather unbelievable. The protagonist's diary, allegedly begun when she was about ten or eleven, is so far beyond precocious that it loses all its credibility.
Pera has decided, perhaps wisely, to keep it so deeply in Lo's focus that the entire affair with Humbert seems inconsequential; a nothing. I found myself squirming and skipping through the many esoteric bits of American pre-teen lore, instead looking for some scraps of story.
Oh, right- it has no ending. There is no conclusion, no closure. Even in a diary format, some kind of ending could have been scrounged up.
Alone, "Lo's Diary" might have been a very interesting and peculiar text. However, the only purpose it currently serves is to pervert the excellent original writings.
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Title: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov ISBN: 0679723161 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Choke by Chuck Palahniuk ISBN: 0385720920 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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