Books Similar To Nabokov's LOLITA?
July 1, 2012 1:41 AM Subscribe
I'm looking for novels with age-discrepant/age-heterogeneous relationships\themes like Nabokov's Lolita. I unsuccessfully tried What Should I Read Next?, but it appears that the site's algorithm is based on the author and not the theme. Thanks in advance!
My short list includes:
Candy/Southern
Breakfast at Tiffany's/Capote
Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn/Miller
Twilight/Meyer
Katie/Me
Pretty Little Liars/ Shepard
A Certain Age/Ray
Innocents/Coote
Teach Me/R.A. Nelson
Gossip Girl/von Ziegesar
On the Road/Kerouac
Shopgirl/Martin
My short list includes:
Candy/Southern
Breakfast at Tiffany's/Capote
Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn/Miller
Twilight/Meyer
Katie/Me
Pretty Little Liars/ Shepard
A Certain Age/Ray
Innocents/Coote
Teach Me/R.A. Nelson
Gossip Girl/von Ziegesar
On the Road/Kerouac
Shopgirl/Martin
This post was deleted for the following reason: nope -- Eyebrows McGee
If you do not exclude gay books, the excellent The Coming Storm by Paul Russel.
posted by ts;dr at 2:55 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by ts;dr at 2:55 AM on July 1, 2012
How about "The Graduate," by Charles Webb, the 1963 book that was the basis for the '67 Dustin Hoffman movie. Also, I second "The Time-Traveller's Wife," which leapt to mind immediately upon reading your question.
posted by Sunburnt at 3:06 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by Sunburnt at 3:06 AM on July 1, 2012
Nabokov's own novella The Enchanter was a thematic precursor to Lolita. (This may be obvious, but you didn't mention it so just in case.)
Ekaterina by Donald Harington is a sort of gender-swapped Lolita. While not a direct retelling plot-wise, some themes are there and if you watch for them you'll find several clear references to Lolita and Nabokov. (A couple are mentioned in that Wikipedia article.)
Karen Russell's Swamplandia!, once the Bird Man comes in.
Italo Svevo's The Nice Old Man and the Little Girl deals with, well...the titular old man's obsession with a little girl.
Harold and Maude was novelized; or you could just watch the movie.
Same with Henry and June, if 12 years is enough difference.
I'm going to stop now before I have to start examining why I can rattle off so many of these. I'm sure I'm forgetting something.
posted by Su at 4:09 AM on July 1, 2012 [2 favorites]
Ekaterina by Donald Harington is a sort of gender-swapped Lolita. While not a direct retelling plot-wise, some themes are there and if you watch for them you'll find several clear references to Lolita and Nabokov. (A couple are mentioned in that Wikipedia article.)
Karen Russell's Swamplandia!, once the Bird Man comes in.
Italo Svevo's The Nice Old Man and the Little Girl deals with, well...the titular old man's obsession with a little girl.
Harold and Maude was novelized; or you could just watch the movie.
Same with Henry and June, if 12 years is enough difference.
I'm going to stop now before I have to start examining why I can rattle off so many of these. I'm sure I'm forgetting something.
posted by Su at 4:09 AM on July 1, 2012 [2 favorites]
Oh, and just to round out the set, there's Lo's Diary by Pia Pera, which is supposed to be Lolita's side of things.
(This is more informational than a real suggestion. It's supposed to be...not good. I still haven't brought myself to read it yet.)
posted by Su at 4:23 AM on July 1, 2012
(This is more informational than a real suggestion. It's supposed to be...not good. I still haven't brought myself to read it yet.)
posted by Su at 4:23 AM on July 1, 2012
The Rainbow, by D H Lawrence
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Sparks
posted by hot soup girl at 5:11 AM on July 1, 2012
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Sparks
posted by hot soup girl at 5:11 AM on July 1, 2012
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (multiple age gap relationships, some legal some not)
Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
Election by Tom Perrotta
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
You Must Remember This by Joyce Carol Oates
posted by houndsoflove at 6:03 AM on July 1, 2012
Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
Election by Tom Perrotta
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
You Must Remember This by Joyce Carol Oates
posted by houndsoflove at 6:03 AM on July 1, 2012
"Fancy" by Robert Krepps, if you can find it.
posted by fivesavagepalms at 6:09 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by fivesavagepalms at 6:09 AM on July 1, 2012
The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold. The age difference doesn't drive the story, but neither is is just an incidental detail.
posted by Bruce H. at 6:25 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by Bruce H. at 6:25 AM on July 1, 2012
you should read Marquez' Of Love and Other Demons immediately.
posted by peachfuzz at 7:07 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by peachfuzz at 7:07 AM on July 1, 2012
Anne Rice's Belinda
posted by brujita at 7:09 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by brujita at 7:09 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
Seconding Death in Venice. I just read it last weekend--it's a novella--and loved it.
posted by HotPatatta at 7:15 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by HotPatatta at 7:15 AM on July 1, 2012
Laurie R. King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice and other books in the series. I don't recommend it, but it does have the age difference you're looking for.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:36 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:36 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
I think that Chéri by Colette is kind of a classic of that genre. The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind by Rebecca Goldstein is also worthwhile.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 7:58 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 7:58 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
Hemingway's Across the River and Into the Trees should go on this list, although be warned it's currently one of his least popular novels.
posted by Rash at 8:14 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by Rash at 8:14 AM on July 1, 2012
The Good Husband is an extraordinary book, and I remember the age gap between Magda and Frannie as a recurring theme in the novel.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:17 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by DarlingBri at 8:17 AM on July 1, 2012
An Education, by Lynn Barber, is a memoir, not a novel, but it is about an age-disparate relationship.
Some books that are definitely like Lolita in that they dramatize how age-disparate relationships can be horribly dysfunctional:
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink (the movie is also excellent).
The Piano Teacher, by Elfriede Jelinek (the movie, La pianiste, is also excellent).
Damage, by Josephine Hart (skip the movie on this one, alas, even though Jeremy Irons).
P.S., by Helen Schulman (run like the wind in the opposite direction from the movie of this book).
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:03 AM on July 1, 2012
Some books that are definitely like Lolita in that they dramatize how age-disparate relationships can be horribly dysfunctional:
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink (the movie is also excellent).
The Piano Teacher, by Elfriede Jelinek (the movie, La pianiste, is also excellent).
Damage, by Josephine Hart (skip the movie on this one, alas, even though Jeremy Irons).
P.S., by Helen Schulman (run like the wind in the opposite direction from the movie of this book).
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:03 AM on July 1, 2012
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi
posted by markdj at 9:04 AM on July 1, 2012
The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi
posted by markdj at 9:04 AM on July 1, 2012
Lolita really isn't about a "relationship"--it's about child sexual abuse. Which suggests to me that Notes on a Scandal, or perhaps A.M. Homes's The End of Alice might be closest to what you are looking for.
If you're looking for neutral or positive depictions of age-disparate relationships, An Education and Chéri are good choices.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:07 AM on July 1, 2012 [6 favorites]
If you're looking for neutral or positive depictions of age-disparate relationships, An Education and Chéri are good choices.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:07 AM on July 1, 2012 [6 favorites]
I just finished reading Heidi Julavits' The Uses of Enchantment. It's sort of 16-Year-Old Lolita told from Lolita's perspective, with an amazingly murky, manipulative, funny, sophisticated character. Here's the NYT review:
Julavits alternates chapters along three separate chronological paths. In the first, we follow Mary through her miserable present, as she hunts down her adolescent history like a grief-stricken detective. In the second, we read the hilariously wrongheaded notes of Dr. Beaton Hammer, the therapist who treated her in the aftermath of the incident. And in chapters titled “What Might Have Happened,” we find out what passes for the real story. It is the strange tale of a schoolgirl who stepped into a strange man’s car, dropped her hockey stick by the roadside to make sure someone would notice she was gone, and interpreted the man’s cautiously receptive response as “bewildered gratitude to some unspecified higher power that this girl should walk into a trap that he had yet to even set.” This encounter between a muted Humbert and a deliberate Lolita who, in essence, kidnapped herself, feels like a surreal dream. And as the three narratives come together, the book tightens into a crisis of storytelling — a dark vaudeville in which teenage girls know very well what is expected of them and act it out as a way of testing their own power, and in which tales of abuse substitute for one another like metaphors.posted by acidic at 10:00 AM on July 1, 2012 [2 favorites]
Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice. (Novel & sequel, classics of camp. Second book offers an especially rich array of age discrepancies.)
Blackout and All Clear (really it's one book in two volumes) by Connie Willis. Age discrepancy isn't its theme, but it's central to the book's most important romantic pairings and plays well within the chief situation: time travelers trapped in WWII England. (Time travel always struck me as horribly gimmicky, but the Dunkirk/BattleOfBritain/Blitz setting lured me in and I wound up awestruck.)
Middle Ground and The Long Afternoon, by Ursula Zilinski. Two separate books constructed around two separate European wars. An age-discrepant relationship is central to Middle Ground, which, despite its grim details and back-and-forth chronology, features the exact Proppian structure Janice Radway unearthed in her ethnography of romance novels. The Long Afternoon contains a really unexpected, delicately built-up, age-discrepant love story, as part of a more sprawling canvas.
posted by feral_goldfish at 10:10 AM on July 1, 2012
Blackout and All Clear (really it's one book in two volumes) by Connie Willis. Age discrepancy isn't its theme, but it's central to the book's most important romantic pairings and plays well within the chief situation: time travelers trapped in WWII England. (Time travel always struck me as horribly gimmicky, but the Dunkirk/BattleOfBritain/Blitz setting lured me in and I wound up awestruck.)
Middle Ground and The Long Afternoon, by Ursula Zilinski. Two separate books constructed around two separate European wars. An age-discrepant relationship is central to Middle Ground, which, despite its grim details and back-and-forth chronology, features the exact Proppian structure Janice Radway unearthed in her ethnography of romance novels. The Long Afternoon contains a really unexpected, delicately built-up, age-discrepant love story, as part of a more sprawling canvas.
posted by feral_goldfish at 10:10 AM on July 1, 2012
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton is another such novel set in a high school. It is quite experimental in structure.
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Alan Gurganus also comes to mind.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:42 AM on July 1, 2012
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Alan Gurganus also comes to mind.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:42 AM on July 1, 2012
Joyce Carol Oates's story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is another important work on the topic.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:44 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:44 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton
Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylord (one of several plots though)
posted by book 'em dano at 1:05 PM on July 1, 2012
Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylord (one of several plots though)
posted by book 'em dano at 1:05 PM on July 1, 2012
Fledgling by Octavia Butler puts some interesting twists on age-disparate relationships.
posted by sigmagalator at 1:11 PM on July 1, 2012
posted by sigmagalator at 1:11 PM on July 1, 2012
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk might fit the bill. The protagonist is a 30 year old business man from a wealthy family in Istanbul who begins an obsessive relationship with his 18 year old cousin on the eve of his engagement to another woman.
posted by kaybdc at 2:38 PM on July 1, 2012
posted by kaybdc at 2:38 PM on July 1, 2012
Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for your extremely helpful answers. You've made an invaluable contribution to the book I'm working on. Thanks again!
posted by lrnarabic at 8:58 AM on July 2, 2012
posted by lrnarabic at 8:58 AM on July 2, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by KateViolet at 2:18 AM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]