THE REAL LOLITA by Sarah Weinman tells the true story of Sally Horner and shows again and again how that story influenced Vladimir Nabokov and his creation LOLITA.

I can’t imagine a more tragic story than Sally Horner’s. She was kidnapped in New Jersey when she was just a child and repeatedly raped by a 50-year-old man for nearly 2 years before she was rescued at the other end of the country.

This occurred in the 1950s, when Nabokov was writing LOLITA although under another title. He began the book but then was stuck and could not finish it until he read newspaper accounts about Sally Horner.

Weinman proves that Lolita and Sally are the same little girl. She points out so many examples in Nabokov’s book, yet he denied many times that his fiction was based on truth.

The problem I have with THE REAL LOLITA Is that Weinman is repetitive in the sections that discuss LOLITA. Plus, reading these sections is too much like reading academic papers. They get tedious.

But Weinman does convince me that Lolita is Sally.