Alisson Wood

In high school, a teacher gave me his copy of Lolita. But only after he read me the opening lines —“light of my life, fire of my loins”—over french fries in a diner, late at night when I should have been home. When he spoke those words to me, my hands cupped around a mug, my palms warming from the stale coffee, I was as in love with him as any teenager could be. I couldn’t believe I was so lucky that this grown man would, as he often reminded me, risk his job to spend time with me alone.

What to Read When You Want to Read Lolita So, you’re finally going to read Lolita. Great! But, maybe read some of these other books first? There are many reasons to read Lolita. If you’re in or have been in any kind of English or creative writing program within academia, you’ll hear lots of (cough, mostly white male, cough) voices insisting you must read it. Okay. Sure. It is a beautiful book. The opening chapter is a stunner, a champion of language flexing his literary muscles on the page.

A dark romance evolves between a high schooler and her English teacher in this breathtakingly powerful memoir about a young woman who must learn to rewrite her own story. “Have you ever read Lolita?” So begins seventeen-year-old Alisson’s metamorphosis from student to lover and then victim. A lonely and vulnerable high school senior, Alisson finds solace only in her writing—and in a young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. North.