Quick Impressions
Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?
The Real Lolita is eye-opening and a fascinating true crime novel. While the novel does switch between Nabokov writing the book and the horror of Sally Horner "the real Lolita" I felt that the author's time was better spent on the latter. However, as interesting as the story was, there wasn't a great deal of concrete writings during Sally's years in captivity so there was a bit of speculation in regard to their everyday life and thus made the book feel padded. Although, this is easy to overlook in the big scheme of things as overall the novel pulls you in with the atrocities that occurred to Sally Horner and the excellent detective work in Sarah Weinman's storytelling. The Real Lolita will break your heart and have you reaching for Lolita but this time with Sally Horner in mind.
This review was originally posted on First Impressions Reviews