"Not a single person, when I quoted the passage about Sally Horner, remembered it.
I can’t say Nabokov designed the book to hide Sally from the reader. Given that the story moves so quickly, perhaps an homage to the highways Humbert and Dolores traverse over many thousands of miles in their cross-country odyssey, it’s easy to miss a lot as you go. But I would argue that even casual readers of Lolita, who number in the tens of millions, plus the many more millions with some awareness of the novel, the two film versions, or its place in the culture these past six decades, should pay attention to the story of Sally Horner because it is the story of so many girls and women, not just in America, but everywhere."
"Excerpt from The Real Lolita" | Penguin Random House Canada
"A number of people told me how bookish Sally was. So in some weird parallel universe, if Lolita had been able to be published [in her lifetime] … would Sally Horner have read it? And what would she have thought of it?
"That's something that I will never stop thinking about."
~ Sarah Weinman
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