Roger Fishbite

Emily Prager's new novel is the revenge of Lolita. It retells Nabokov's controversial masterpiece in the half-innocent, half sly voice of the nymphet herself. Or rather a late 1990's version of her sassy, worryingly prococious, sexy, pain-in-the-ass Lucky Linderhof, or just a kid who's had to learn to talk and move fast? When the story begins Lucky is at the juvenile detention facility, waiting trial for murder. . . Roger Fishbite is what she calls her Humbert Humbert, the writ er to whom her dippy, beautiful, dysfunctional mother rents out the apartment downstairs. He has a `fisheye' look he gives her when her mo ther's out of sight. Like Nabakov's Lolita this is a perverse and disturbing sexual comedy, retold with a provocative late 90's spin. An unputdownable story, and a razor-sharp indictment of a society that asks four year olds to wiggle and pout as beauty queens but turns a blind eye when the Roger Fishbites get the wrong idea.