Your review captures PERFECTLY my experience of reading this book back when I was in college. Humbert Humbert is an unreliable enough narrator that you're really reading two stories -- what he's telling you, and what you're able to intuit behind what he's telling you. One of the things that made it more disturbing for me was that I nannied a girl about Lolita's age for a few summers, and he captured that age well -- because of that, I could see that just because Lolita was acting out in certain ways did NOT mean that she was inviting sex/rape from an adult.

Have you seen the two movies based on the book? The Stanley Kubrick one from the 60s is all right, but the newer one is sickening because it lacks the nuance of the book and portrays the affair as if the directors simply "took Humbert Humbert's word for it."

Thanks! :) I loved the use of an unreliable narrator in Lolita and Nabokov really pulled it off. Once you get past the idea of an unreliable narrator, you really see a lot of messages hidden behind the words (like Dolores' many tantrums during her stay with Humbert). I have a lot of small nieces and nephews and Lolita made me think about them a lot as well. I don't think that a child invites sex or rape just because they're acting out. That's basically the same as the "she wear skirts so she deserves to get raped" mentality, Humbert took advantage of Dolores, no matter which way you twist.

Not yet, but it would be pretty hard to see a movie based on this book, especially if you and the director have different interpretations, since the choices are the book is about rape and pedophalia or as someone once described the book "true love gone wrong".
Personally, I'm sticking with the first.