Lo's Diary - Pia Pera
King, Queen, Knave - Vladimir Nabokov

Having read Lo's Diary, I now understand why Nabokov's son made such a fuss over the publication of the book. It's not the violence done to copyrights, or Nabokov, or Humbert Humbert, it's the unsympathetic treatment of Lo herself that tries to do the most damage to the magic of Lolita. Pera's Lolita is by all appearances a thoroughly ordinary girl with a jarringly pretentious literary style. (One cannot argue that this was acquired from contact with the fervid sensibilities of Humbert as it antedates her first encounter with the character who has been recast as M. Guibert). She comes across as a poorly drawn stereotype of a young teenager--self-centered, silly, and undistinguished, without a single spark of real life to make up for her deficiencies. Reading Lo's Diary one is left with no understanding of how Humbert could ever have fancied himself in love with the girl, and without the belief that amidst his manipulations and perversions, Humbert cherishes genuine love for Lolita, the story falls flat.

King, Queen, Knave was the appropriate antidote for Pera's book. The sory is essentially Madame Bovary from the perspective of Leon, but Nabokov's satiric sensibilities transform it into a dark comedy rather than a tragedy.