''Roger Fishbite'' is a novel by the American writer and journalist
Emily Prager
Emily Prager (born April 21, 1948) is an American author, journalist, actress and comedian. Prager grew up in Texas, Taiwan, and Greenwich Village, New York City. She is a graduate of the Brearley School, Barnard College and has a master's degre ...
, which was published in 1999.
Themes and literary connections
The novel was written partly as a literary
parody
A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...
of
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
's 1955 novel ''
Lolita
''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The protagonist and narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He details his obsession ...
'', partly as a "reply both to the book and to the icon that the character Lolita has become." It tells the story of thirteen-year-old Lucky Lady Linderhoff, and her mother, and their lodger, whom Lucky calls Roger Fishbite.
While taking its inspiration from Nabokov's ''Lolita'', Prager's novel is narrated by Lucky, not Fishbite, and displays a number of twists and turns that differ from the original text. Prager also updates the story, setting it in the modern-day period, rather than choosing to set it in the 1950s.
Reviews
At the heart of the novel is the issue that Lucky raises constantly throughout: The way in which children in America (and western society in general, I would add) are hated and feared by a society that seeks to eroticise them whilst at the same time destroying them.
What prevents the novel from devolving into an inside joke is the enthralling voice of Lucky Linderhof, who, at nearly 15, tells her tale with the world-weariness befitting an elder statesman of child abuse.
References
External links
Emily Prager's page at Random House
1999 American novels
Works about Lolita
Parallel literature
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