Modern Lolita too close to the classic
Any writer approaching the subject of paedophilia outside a Catholic setting will inevitably come up against the towering figure of Vladimir Nabokov and Lolita. In polite company, people still let out a gasp of fright if that seminal novel is mentioned. The sticky veneer of scandal still clings to Humbert Humbert’s grooming of Dolores Haze, 60 years later. And yet, as Martin Amis has capably argued, and countless readers have identified themselves, Lolita is a moral book, “both irresistible and unforgivable . . . However cruel Humbert is to Lolita, Nabokov is crueller to Humbert — finessingly cruel.”
Sofka Zinovieff’s novel Putney attempts to chart the same territory as Lolita, but it is neither irresistible nor unforgiveable. It is comparably platonic and rigorously safe in its exploration of the relationship between 20-something composer Ralph and prepubescent Daphne, set in 1970s London. And from the very earliest pages, we find Zinovieff hasn’t constructed anything new but has borrowed rather liberally from the great master.
Both Daphne and Dolores are 12 when the crime commences. Daphne is introduced “sprawled on the sofa reading a comic,” while Dolores “went up to her room to plunge into the comic books acquired for rainy days”. The former is “small but strong and suntanned”. The latter has “Marvellous skin . . . tender and tanned, not the least blemish.”
Ralph gives Daphne the nickname Monkey “for her delicate hands and supple limbs”. Nabokov, in turn, liked to point out Dolores’ “delicateboned, long-toed, monkeyish feet,” and “monkeyish nimbleness”.
Both Ralph and Humbert fume at the thought of some younger boy taking their prize. From Putney: “He imagined spotty youths pawing over her perfect body and felt murderous.” From Lolita: “Odious visions of stinking high school boys in sweat-shirts and an ember-red cheek pressing against hers . . . ”
And, as is if to match Hum and Lo’s grand continental voyage (an abduction, really), we find Ralph escorting Daphne via bus on a threeday trip from London to Athens. By page 150 of Putney, Ralph is defending himself in unavoidable terms: “I wasn’t some Humbert Humbert obsessed with nymphets.” Except that he is, to a T.
For all this tactless pinching, Zinovieff simply doesn’t have the courage to walk the sketchy moral boundary that Nabokov did.
There’s nothing tragic here, just a void of originality.