Rust & stardust /

SIXTY YEARS AFTER the American publication of Vladimir Nabokov's literary tour de force "Lolita," two new books take up the kidnapping of an 11-year-old New Jersey girl by a pedophile, the case on which Nabokov partially based his novel. Both Sarah Weinman's nonfiction account, "The Real Lolita," and T. Greenwood's novel, "Rust and Stardust," reflect changes in our understanding of pedophilia and sexual abuse as a disorder of power rather than as a side effect of uncontrollable lust; more important, in the light of the #MeToo movement, we have come to value the witness of abused little girls. When Nabokov's sensational, now classic, novel was first published in Europe in 1955, it was banned. As a result, it was turned down by a number of publishers in the United States. Until it was finally published here, in 1958, Americans smuggled it home as once they had "Ulysses" or "Fanny Hill." Told in the first person by the child molester Humbert Humbert, "Lolita" describes his affair with the 12-year-old "nymphet" he kidnapped and held for nearly two years. Humbert's account was written from prison, where he died while awaiting trial for the murder of a rival. Lolita, we are told, eventually married and died in childbirth - Nabokov's way of finessing the problem of imagining a future for the violated child and her abuser. At the time, the novel was mostly seen as a tragedy, the tale of a man tormented by lust and guilt - a perverse love. In other words, it was Humbert's tragedy, but also possibly a work of comic genius. Although the initial critical reception acknowledged the feelings of unease created by the erotic situation, the work was generally well received, the rare literary achievement that became a best seller. Two New York Times critics captured the prevailing reactions. Elizabeth Janeway saw the novel (as did Nabokov) as being essentially about Humbert Humbert: "I can only say that Humbert's fate seems to me classically tragic, a most perfectly realized expression of the moral truth that Shakespeare summed up in the sonnet that begins, 'The expense of spirit in a waste of shame / Is lust in action': right down to the detailed working out of Shakespeare's adjectives, 'perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full of blame.' " Orville Prescott, writing at the same time, had a different opinion: "There are two equally serious reasons why it isn't worth any adult reader's attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive." We know there have been countless real-life stories that mirror the plot of "Lolita" - older man kidnapping and abusing a little girl. Both Weinman's and Greenwood's books follow the case of Sally Horner, who in 1948 was abducted by the 50-yearold Frank LaSalle and, as in Nabokov's novel, held captive for nearly two years. Eventually, Sally was found unharmed - except, of course, for the lasting trauma of the experience. Her life, like Lolita's, was to be short; she was killed in an automobile accident when she was just 15. A few commentators noted briefly, and Nabokov acknowledged, that some details in his book were based on actual cases of pedophilic kidnappers, and he explicitly mentions Sally Horner in "Lolita" when Humbert asks himself, "Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle, a 50-year-old mechanic, had done to 11-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?" But because he insisted on the primacy of art over reality, he held that "Lolita" sprang essentially from his own artistic gifts. Sarah Weinman is a crime writer who has seriously researched the Nabokov connection. Her book provides extensive background for the Horner story: Among the many people she tracks down are one of Horner's nieces and a neighbor who was instrumental in Sally's rescue. The achievement of her impressive literary sleuthing is to bring to life a girl whose story had been lost. And she provides documentation of Nabokov's use of the case, demonstrating that the writer, long fascinated with the essential paradigm of middle-aged men obsessed with young girls, was well into writing "Lolita" when he encountered the real-life story of Sally Horner and incorporated details of it into his novel, something he would later deny or downplay. Weinman takes pains to address the virtual lack of empathy with Sally in the critical coverage of Nabokov's fiction, noting that Vera Nabokov was concerned about this in the wake of the success of "Lolita." "One subject bothered her above all: the way that public reception, and critical assessments, seemed to forget that there was a little girl at the center of the novel, and that she deserved more attention and care: T wish someone would notice the tender description of the child's helplessness, her pathetic dependence upon the monstrous HH, and her heart-rending courage all along.' " But if Vera believed her husband understood the situation from Dolly's point of view, the reader is not apt to agree. Humbert Humbert is racked by guilt and sorrow, by recollections of his passion for " Lo," but he is also filled, one feels, with satisfaction at his own literary genius. There is very little about the novel that reveals Dolly's thoughts and emotions. In "Rust and Stardust," T. Greenwood sets herself the task of dramatizing Sally's experience, attempting to fill in those missing feelings and reactions, as well as those of her family and friends. "I have taken many, many liberties with both character and plot," Greenwood admits. There was, for example, no such person as the nice nun, Mary Katherine, who when she can't persuade her superiors to share her concern about the dreamy, motherless girl in her class, vows to devote herself in the future to the welfare of abused children. Did the real Frank LaSalle give Sally a puppy? What was the actual social level of the Horners? Theirs was a world of trailer parks and cheap motels (as in "Lolita") but while Greenwood has them talk like characters out of Steinbeck ("I wanna see that picture," Sally said. "I know I ain't nearly as glamorous as that girl Lena," says someone else), Weinman and Nabokov employ a higher level of diction. What were these vanished people really like? Unlike Greenwood, Weinman restricts herself to what can be known and labels what is speculative as such. Some readers (myself included) are troubled by fictionalizations, although we find ourselves caught up by them all the same. Yet since Nabokov's day, as we come to understand more about the artistic process, the unconscious and the nature of "inspiration," we have realized that no work of art is unrelated to the factual world. Even if Nabokov refined and dreamed the events of his novel, in the process turning it into art, our understanding of the convergence of fiction and life has changed. We know that Sally Horner's experience was only too horrifyingly real. Fictional versions of actual events raise the salient question of our day: the role of truth. And, of course, whether we value it. DIANE JOHNSON is the author, most recently, of the novel "Flyover Lives." A story now understood as being about pedophilia and sexual abuse.

*Starred Review* This fictionalization of the 1948 kidnapping said to have inspired Nabokov's Lolita (1955) lures readers in with a disturbing hook: the dangers of innocence. Sally Horner, a lonely fifth-grader desperate to belong, reluctantly agrees to the shoplifting initiation proposed by a group of cool girls. True to form, Sally's new friends abandon her at the store, and no one notices the man who grabs her, claiming to be an FBI agent. If Sally wants to avoid jail, she must come away with him so that he can plead her case to a judge. Naive and terrified of jail, Sally convinces her mother that she's been invited on vacation with a school friend. But, too late, Sally realizes that her reprieve from justice is the start of a horrific ordeal, as her captor, a convicted child molester, drags her across the country to evade police. Greenwood intersperses Sally's narrative with the voices of those she's affected: her mother, Ella, who is breaking under the weight of grief and guilt; Ella's brother-in-law, Al, who relentlessly searches for her; Vivi, one of the cool girls, who desperately regrets her role in Sally's kidnapping; and nuns Mary Katherine, Lena, and Ruth, who are the closest Sally gets to knights in shining armor. This is a beautifully written, unnerving tragedy woven from equal measures of hope and menace. Readers should watch for Sarah Weinman's nonfiction account of the Sally Horner case, The Real Lolita, coming in September.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2018 Booklist

Greenwood (The Forever Bridge) reimagines the true-crime story that inspired Nabokov's Lolita in this riveting suspense tale that takes readers across state lines and through several years of terror. Eleven-year-old Sally Horner is a shy misfit longing for friendship when Frank LaSalle, pretending to be a cop, tricks her into thinking he could have her arrested after he observes her stealing a notebook. He then inveigles her into his custody and deceives her disabled, widowed mother as to his true identity and intentions. It's all so chillingly plausible that, like Sally, the reader half-believes LaSalle's lies; his assaults on Sally's psyche are at least as troubling as his assaults on her young body as he takes the girl from Camden, N.J., to San Jose, Calif. A minor but important theme concerns the girls whose bullying and ostracism of Sally rendered her more vulnerable to LaSalle's predation. Yet grace touches this dark tale, too, in the form of genuinely kind characters whose concern is a balm to the difficult events of the book-including Sally's brother-in-law, whose dogged determination to find Sally drives the search, and a neighbor who turns out to be a lifeline. Greenwood's story will spellbind readers as the terrors mounts. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In this fictionalized heartrending account of the 1948 abduction of Sally Horner, the inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Greenwood (The Golden Hour) draws on meticulous research of Sally's ordeal. Eleven-year-old Sally yearns to be included in a secret girls' club and reluctantly agrees to shoplift for initiation. But recent ex-con Frank LaSalle catches her and pretends he's an FBI agent, taking her into custody to save her from jail. Using lies and deception, LaSalle lures Sally first to Atlantic City, then stays one step ahead of police by continually moving around the country, posing as her widowed father. Sally can hardly remember the different names she must use, and because of Frank's treachery, she doesn't know if her mother, Ella, even wants her to return. LaSalle uses Sally as his sexual slave, threatening lifelong misery if she ever tells a soul. Each time Sally finds an ally-Sister Mary Katherine from school, Lena from the traveling circus, or Ruth from the trailer park-they vanish. Sally can trust no one. VERDICT Readers who relish novels based on true events will be both riveted and disturbed by this retelling of one of America's most famous abduction cases. [See Prepub Alert, 2/1/18; coming in September from Ecco: HarperCollins is Sarah Weinman's nonfiction account of this case, The Real Lolita.-Ed.]-K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A fictional account of the real-life 1940s kidnapping that inspired Lolita.On a dare, 11-year-old Sally Horner tries to steal a composition notebook from Woolworth's one afternoon after school. A man at the lunch counter sees her and poses as an FBI agent. Spinning an elaborate story of a court date and house arrest, the manwho goes by Mr. Warnertells Sally to meet him the next day after school. He's prepared a cover story for Sally's invalid mother and heavily pregnant sister; Sally is to ask permission to go on a family vacation with a friend. So while Sally believes she's being taken into custody and her family believes she's headed to the seashore, she is actually commencing a yearslong odyssey across the United States with a sex offender, whose real name is Frank La Salle. Greenwood (The Golden Hour, 2017, etc.) begins the novel by alternating between the perspectives of Sally and her mother and gradually adds in more narrators as the manhunt for Sally expands, from a brother-in-law playing amateur sleuth to a schoolteacher who suspects that something is terribly wrong with the new girl in her classroom. According to the author's note, reading Sally Horner's story in the papers may have been the catalyst Nabokov needed to keep the manuscript of Lolita from being relegated to the bonfire. Greenwood's stated desire is to rescue Horner herself from being "just a footnote to someone else's story." It's true that Sally's world comes vividly to life. But the book is absolutely stuffed with detail and scenes that don't move the plot forward, and what should be a breath-holding suspense novel requires a great deal of effort to move through.An overlong journey through a stranger-than-fiction life. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.