The review from amazon posted by SFG some time back, in addition to all its other criticisms of Enchanter, faulted it for having a story that was not very interesting. That reviewer described it as largely being 'the lurid musings of the old rake,' or words to that effect. While it may depend somewhat on one's meaning of 'lurid,' I would still disagree with that assessment.
The Enchanter is of course nowhere near as extensive nor as varied as Lolita in its overall story. A comparison of 77 pages against 310 pages might lead one to suspect as much, even without reading the two books.
However, the story line of Enchanter is actually quite different from the corresponding part of Lolita, and for a particular reason.
The twelve-year-old Lolita is virtually delivered into Humbert's hands with almost no effort on his part, as the result of two very fortunate acccidnts. First of all, marrying the mother turns out to be no problem, since it turns out that Charlotte falls hopelessly in love with Humbert and forces the issue by suggesting he either move out of her house or that they get married. Faced with this sudden gift from Heaven, Humbert quickly sees the merit of marriage, and so they do.
Fifty days later, she finally gains access to his diary and discovers his complete lack of love for her. She hurries out of the house to mail some letters she has written and is killed by a passing car.
So Humbert ends up as Lolita's nominal stepfather with almost no direct effort on his part. And then the bulk of the Lolita story begins.
In Enchanter, the initial situation is somewhat different, so the ensuing story is also different, and it turns out to be not so easy for Arthur to get the girl into his posession. He has to work for it.
When he first catches sight of the girl she is in the care of a 'guardian,' or permanent baby-sitter, and the mother lives out of town. Furthermore it will turn out that Arthur has to woo the mother to gain her favor. So Arthur methodically develops a plan which he proceeds to follow. However, that plan involves first gaining the confidence of the guardian, then gaining an introduction to the mother through the guardian, then gaining the mother's favor, and then finally getting her to say 'yes.' As in real life, none of those steps has a foregone outcome, and a considerable part of the book is the description of just how Arthur does go about making progress with his plan.
The girl is of course the end objective of the plan, but that does not mean that Arthur spends the middle part of the book in lurid imaginations regarding the girl, as the reviewer suggests. Instead the reader is treated to a rather interesting tour, as Arthur makes his way, negotiating each of the individual steps of his plan, before he even gets close to the girl.
On its own small canvas, and in its own varied ways, the Enchanter provides a miniature equivalent to the varied cross-coutry tours that appear in Lolita.
Once Arthur does get near the girl, however, the story is quite near its end, and it wraps up rather quickly and suddenly. That is also different from Lolita, but that is for another time.
Peder
