'The Real Lolita' Investigates The True Crime Story Of Sally Horner
Written in light of Nabokov's famous novel, the book stands out for its captivating mix of tenacious reporting, astute literary analysis, and passionate posthumous recognition of a defenseless child.
Sarah Weinman, an editor and writer of true crime stories, doubles up on her literary sleuthing in The Real Lolita, investigating the 1948 kidnapping and rape of 11-year-old Sally Horner by a convicted pedophile.
She does it not just for its own inherent interest, but in order to build a convincing case that it served as an inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov's most famous novel, — a claim that he denied. Her book makes for riveting reading, despite a disconcerting tendency to fill in blanks with conjectures (about young Sally's thoughts,
