Being Lolita: A Memoir

by Alisson Wood

Overview

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A dark relationship evolves between a high schooler and her English teacher in this breathtakingly powerful memoir about a young woman who must learn to rewrite her own story.

“Have you ever read Lolita?”

So begins seventeen-year-old Alisson’s metamorphosis from student to lover and then victim. A lonely and vulnerable high school senior, Alisson finds solace only in her writing—and in a young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. North.

Mr. North gives Alisson a copy of Lolita to read, telling her it is a beautiful story about love. The book soon becomes the backdrop to a connection that blooms from a simple crush into a devastating and dangerous bond. But as Mr. North’s hold on her tightens, Alisson is forced to evaluate how much of their narrative is actually a disturbing fiction.

In the wake of what becomes a deeply abusive relationship, Alisson is faced again and again with the story of her past, from rereading Lolita in college to working with teenage girls to becoming a professor of creative writing. It is only with that distance and perspective that she understands the ultimate power language has had on her—and how to harness that power to tell her own true story.

Being Lolita is a stunning coming-of-age memoir that shines a bright light on our shifting perceptions of consent, grooming, vulnerability, and power. This is the story of what happens when a young woman realizes her entire narrative must be rewritten—and then takes back the pen to rewrite it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250217219
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Alisson Wood is an award-winning writer whose essays have been published in the New York Times, Catapult, and Epiphany. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction from New York University. Alisson teaches creative writing at her alma mater and at Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. She is the founder and editor in chief of Pigeon Pages, a New York City literary journal and reading series. Alisson was a winner of the inaugural Breakout 8 Award from the Author’s Guild and Epiphany. Being Lolita is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

08/24/2020

Wood debuts with a unflinching account of her high school affair with a teacher. After introducing her to Nabokov’s masterwork of lechery (“he told me it was a beautiful story about love”), “Mr. North” (whose name has been changed) reveals himself as a manipulative predator. Twenty-six when he meets 17-year-old Wood, North grooms the already fragile and troubled teen, moving from inquiries about her writing into inappropriate forays (such as passing notes guessing her bra size and revealing that of his penis). In an effort to create “plausible deniability” as their relationship becomes physical, North pushes Wood to date schoolmates while still stringing her along with promises of undying love and marriage after she graduates. “It seems as if no matter how active or passive a girl is, she is still doomed,” she muses. Wood later re-examines Lolita (and the power dynamics with North) in a college class, then while working with at-risk teenagers, and again after she suffers a sexual assault. “I began to question my memory, my very self,” she writes, and, now, upon viewing photographs of herself as a teenager when she’d felt “the most sexy and seductive,” she sees a lost child. Wood’s potent memoir doubles as a cautionary tale that indicts literary and social tropes of irresistible, sexualized youths­. It’s an impressive, provocative outing. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

2020-06-09
A New York writer recalls her affair with a predatory teacher who told her, “You’re my Lolita.”

By the age of 18, Wood had undergone electroconvulsive therapy and taken more than 20 medications, “ranging from Prozac to lithium,” for medical problems including self-mutilation and suicidal depression. Her fragile mental health had put her high school graduation at risk. As a 17-year-old senior, she began getting help outside of class from a 27-year-old male English teacher, a Lolita fan she calls Nick North. She soon fell into an abusive romance described in this uneven memoir that overstretches parallels to Nabokov’s tale of a pedophile who rapes his 12-year-old stepdaughter. At furtive meetings at diners, Nick read Lolita to her and ruthlessly exploited her trust. Fearful of being fired, he insisted she start dating someone else as a cover for their romance, which she did, guiltily and briefly. He refused to sleep with her until she’d graduated but cruelly told her about his interim girlfriend. He persuaded her to attend Ithaca College by implying that he might go back to school at Cornell, then visited erratically until she broke up with him and later began her own teaching career. Wood tells her tale swiftly and suspensefully, but the writing can be wooden (she wants “to impact my students in supportive, meaningful ways”) and novelistically purple (“I looked up at him from inside his arms and tried to tell him Kiss me just kiss me please kiss me…and instead he squeezed me harder and let me go”). At heart, this is a potboiler with a gloss of literary street cred, and Wood may suspect it: “Sometimes I worry that the whole Lolita intertextuality is just a conceit, a clever way to elevate what happened to me, to raise it above the tawdry.” Many readers will also suspect it, but others will be turning the pages too fast to care.

An absorbing but flawed memoir of a male teacher’s abuse of a young female student.

Kirkus Reviews

"A chilling and propulsive debut about the danger of being captive inside someone else's story, and the power of choosing your own." —Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me

"Being Lolita is a book of deep insight and bravery—and ultimately one of power. In the era of #MeToo, Wood’s voice will change things for the better." —Darin Strauss, bestselling author of Half a Life

"Being Lolita is an unflinching depiction of grooming and a searing indictment of exploitative teachers, but most of all it’s an act of redemption—a powerful realization of Wood’s vow 'to do the little I can to make sure what happened to me doesn’t happen again.'" —Susan Choi, author of the National Book Award-winning Trust Exercise

"It is incredible that Alisson Wood can write a story of such brutality and still make room for hope. But she does. Wood’s debut is a celebration of survival, teaching us that in the end, we are the most reliable narrators of all, the hero of our own stories. Being Lolita is an incisive reckoning, a work of art, a new education." —T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

"In Being Lolita, Alisson Wood traces one story of a teenage girl falling in love with her teacher, and then traces it again through the open lens of time and reflection. Each click of the aperture in this beautifully told memoir lets in more light, until the clouds of the past begin to part, allowing an image of a young woman to form on the page that is not fated to simply suffer at the hands of her abusers, but is able to break through the glass and live a life she can call her own." —Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

"Being Lolita is a book of rare resonance, simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful in its ongoing desire for a world of integrity, sanity, and respect. You won’t forget it any time soon." —Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World

"Wood reminds us that stories still have the power to change the world. This is a fascinating story of survival and purpose, yet it is also a story of interpretation. How we read the world changes how we live in it. A fantastic debut." —Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased

"An unflinching account . . . Wood’s potent memoir doubles as a cautionary tale that indicts literary and social tropes of irresistible, sexualized youths. It’s an impressive, provocative outing." —Publisher's Weekly

"A remarkable feat of self-awareness . . . Incredibly powerful and important literary criticism . . . Wood’s memoir is a triumph over heartbreak, trauma, and metamorphosis." —Paperback Paris

"Deeply rich in language and perspective, Being Lolita is a haunting page-turner that puts readers on the edge of their seats, much like the original Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Wood is a talented writer and engaging narrator, bravely sharing her story in the most eloquent of ways. You will never read Lolita the same again." —San Francisco Book Review

From the Publisher