Beyond Lolita: 5 Books Showing Relationships With Age Gaps
When Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, was published in 1955, it created a sensation. Despite being banned at different points in time in countries across the globe, the novel has a deep-reaching cultural impact 68 years later. Many of its references, however, are steeped in a foggy memory of the plot, casting 12-year-old Dolores Haze as a romantic temptress with little concern for her evil stepfather, Humbert Humbert, as sexual predator.
(For more on the way Lolita has been recast in pop culture, listen to the wonderful 10-episode Lolita podcast hosted by Jamie Loftus, recorded in 2020, in which she traces the journey of literary character to cultural icon in film, TV, music, and fashion.)
In a more critical condemnation of the novel’s content Rebecca Solnit concluded in her 2015 essay “Men Explain Lolita to Me,” why including the novel in any canon of required reading was problematic: “[Because] You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us.”
In my novel, Daughter of a Promise, I retell of the legend of David and Bathsheba. Originally printed in the second Book of Samuel in the Bible, it is a rather succinct story of another controversial coupling that has influenced readers for thousands of years. It has been the subject of many plays and even famously dramatized in a 1951 film starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. Was David abusing his power in summoning the beautiful young woman he saw bathing from his rooftop? Was Bathsheba a temptress? Rabbis have been debating for centuries as to whether the relationship was consensual.
Check out Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg’s Daughter of a Promise here:
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However, in the Bible there is no room made for Bathsheba’s voice, leaving me, and I would think most female readers, yearning for her point of view. Did she desire David, did she have a choice when it came to having sex with the great king? The plot intensifies after their first liaison, but we are denied Bathsheba’s thoughts and reactions, even when her baby dies at seven days old. To address the very thing Solnit found so problematic, I needed to write a version of Bathsheba who could not be silenced and was anything but disposable.
I turned the tale into a modern one, set in the high-stakes world of investment banking where David is the powerful dealmaker in Mergers and Acquisitions and Betsabé Ruiz is a recent college graduate and analyst. In order to inform my understanding of the attraction between a woman and a man with a 30-year age difference I observed a handful of couples but also read various novels and memoirs.
Unlike Lolita, those I chose were penned by women and, for the most part, written in the first person. Although any compilation of books featuring this archetypical relationship should include Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brönte, and Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, I am focusing here on contemporary works, those having to reconcile with the feminist movement and #MeToo.
Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday
Although this is a novel in three distinct parts, I include it in this round-up because of the first section, which is rumored to closely approximate the author’s sexual liaison with Philip Roth. Offering a meaningful glimpse into a young woman’s world, the novel explains why a romantic relationship between people of disparate generations might come to be. He is her mentor as well as her fan. She appreciates his quirky intellectualism. The novel destigmatizes their age difference, emphasizing the fact that every relationship is unique and can’t be judged from the outside.
My Dark Vanessa, by Kate Elizabeth Russell
In this haunting novel, a young woman is seduced by a boarding school teacher who makes her feel special. She continues, as an adult, to feel “one of a kind” with this man despite the fact several other women are making allegations against him. This protagonist narrator is certainly unreliable and her mental gymnastics—her justifications, her despair, her jealousy and anger—are masterfully written. This story is a testament to the fact that relationships, for better or worse, shape us.
Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me, by Lucinda Franks
A work of literary memoir in which Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Franks writes of her marriage to Manhattan DA, Robert Morgenthau. She was 26 and he was 53. The insights this memoir offers regarding how such different types of people, he the establishment and she anti-, form a bond that grows and endures. This novel was eye-opening as much as it felt relatable.
My Last Innocent Year, by Daisy Alpert Florin
A campus novel where the protagonist, Isabel, has an affair with her professor that will have ramifications throughout her life. Isabel is not a perfect girl. She is sympathetic, yes, but makes some bad choices and behaves in ways she later regrets. How refreshing to read about a young woman who doesn’t always do the right thing. One of the great things about contemporary novels that explore sex and romance from the woman’s point of view is the permissibility of female desire.
Vladimir, by Julia May Jonas
The protagonist is a 58-year-old female English professor married to the former head of the department in a small college in upstate New York. The action begins with the husband being relieved of his duties after eight former students accuse him of sexual impropriety. The telling occurs at a moment in time when the unnamed protagonist is coming unhinged, ultimately hatching a plan to kidnap and seduce an attractive young, male professor. Jonas writes with excellent nuance, the novel serving as a commentary on modern-day contradictions around sex and power dynamics.