I, Lolita

Synopsis

When Narra launches The Novel – four hundred pristine, wordless pages – her literary circle is struck dumb. Among them is V, writer, former academic, and Narra’s closest friend since their student days: a woman who has built her life around language, now faced with the one text she cannot read.

Travelling by Eurostar to meet Narra in Paris, V turns over the wreckage of the launch supper, where five writers and a publisher talked themselves to exhaustion rather than admit they had nothing to say. She is also preparing an essay on Nabokov’s Lolita – and the two tasks spiral together: what do we owe a brilliant, troubling book? What do we owe a brilliant, troubling friend?

I, Lolita is a novel about the hunger for new forms, the cruelty of literary ambition, and the love between two women who have made and unmade each other over decades. Its ending – a letter, a Zurich clinic, a valediction in French – reframes everything that precedes it with quiet, irreversible force.

Formally inventive and emotionally precise, Vesna Main’s novel belongs to the tradition of Cusk and Bernhard: fiction that refuses consolation, trusts its reader absolutely, and leaves an image – a woman in white, a gilded halo, a book of blank pages – that does not easily fade.

Praise for Previous Work

‘(On Waiting for a Party) There’s a slight Mrs Dalloway-esque air to this slim novel, which spans the hours that pianist Claire spends waiting to attend the birthday party of her novelist friend … As her mind circles around her numerous lovers – and her “found family” – she meditates on what makes for a life well-lived and re-evaluates her marriage.’ —Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

‘(On Waiting for a Party) Claire’s voice is one we seldom hear from, that of an elderly woman – “people of her age are not written about; they are written off”; she is also unexpectedly preoccupied with sexual longing. This is a woman who still craves sexual connection and fulfilment.’ —Julia Kelly, The Irish Times

‘(On Waiting for a Party) Main’s novella takes the form of a long interior monologue … Claire explores a multitude of themes along the way: love, marriage, friendship, sexuality and ageing, and, of course, memory … Another enjoyable, skilfully crafted piece of fiction.’ —Susan Osborne, A Life in Books

‘(On Waiting for a Party) Vesna Main has cultivated a reputation for experimental fiction in a handful of books, including her novel Good Day? (2019), which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. One of the possibilities Claire considers – “a Bildungsroman” or coming-of-age novel – might seem unlikely, given her age, but it is in fact the best way to describe this late-life story of self-discovery, sexual awakening and friendships that feel like family.’ —Julia Dallaway, TLS