Nabokov's Lolita has a palpable, erotic, and equally disturbing response in Pia Pera's Lo's Diary. The work was translated from Italian to English in 1999, with a forward from Dmitri Nabokov (Vladimir's son) which focuses mainly on the copyright issues. In the vein of Marion Zimmer Bradley (the Firebrand, Mists of Avalon) and John Gardner (Grendel) Lo's Diary takes upon the delicate challenge of constructing a fresh, believable perspective of another character. This quote of Lo's from the cover immediately ensnared me...
"My lips are almost impeccably painted: it's like a piece of me has been peeled away, a tiny lip muscle laid bare, red blood just veiled by skin too fine to hide the flesh, so in reality two pairs of lips can be seen, superimposed...a dizzying, out-of-focus effect."
The socially uncomfortable realities of the blurred worlds between adolescence and adulthood and that line where sexuality is drawn is never more implicit than in this book. Pera moves us back and forth on the pendulum of little girl innocence and big girl desires in the flesh of one Lolita.