The first time I met a nymphet* who was reading Lolita was about ten years ago. She was a high school junior who boldly cradled her copy around Manhattan. But she is no anomaly. For example, Amy Rose Spiegel and Rose Lichter-Marckread read Lolita as nymphets.
Spiegel, who wrote “Older Men: Everything you always wanted to know about them, and weren’t at all afraid to ask”, shared that when she was fifteen she, “[...] idealized the thought of someone being single-mindedly obsessed with me the way the novel’s narrator is with Lolita.”**
And Lichter-Marck, who wrote “Two Kinds of Memory: Catching moments like butterflies”,** shared that when she was sixteen she fell in love with Lolita and that “From the first sentence I was hooked.”
I’ve written about fictional nymphets like Molly Maxwell who independently read Lolita in class, but it would be fascinating to hear from other nymphets who have read Nabokov’s magnum opus and get their take on the novel.
* Based on Merriam Webster’s definition of nymphet, my studies, and experiences, I’ve extended Humbert’s age limit by five years to nineteen-years-old.
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