Finished - Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

When Humbert murders Clare Quilty it is like he is killing himself: a francophone, a well-dressed, literary, convincing, voluable man. He is killing the beast, the hound, the spider that he so often declares himself to be. He is violently and clumsily ending the life of a man who acted towards Lolita much as he himself did. It is redemption for a lunatic, the apology of a narcicist.

Lolita has rejected him because she cannot forgive his beastial nature, and it seems he cannot live without Lolita. So he enters Quilty's rambling house knowing how it will end for himself, and after the murder immediately confesses to the nearest people: an odious group who exploit Quilty's hospitality and dandishly espose their wish to have a go at murdering him too. He is free to leave and could drive to Mexico but meanders until he crashes, and then waits to be taken. He is imolating his freedom, taking himself away from his own corrupt nature to a cell. At the last he claims that he is not writing Lolita for exoneration, but for whatever small good it may do his own soul.

Despite his horrid and unforgivable abuse of Lolita, despite knowing he is an unreliable narrator using his considerable verbal skills to gain our sympathy, despite these things, I am struggling to disbelieve in the love he claims for her.