LIT LISTS: The five best worst couples in literature

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well. One title on Somers's list of five of the best worst couples in literature, as shared at B & N Reads:

The Creepiest Duo in History: Humbert and Dolores (Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov)

We all know that if someone behaved in real life the way people act in romantic comedies, bursting in on weddings and making speeches and committing all sorts of atrocities in order to prove to someone that they’re insanely obsessed, they’d be arrested. Take that sort of obsessive behavior even further and you get into the dark, icky waters of Humbert Humbert’s sick obsession with the young girl he calls Lolita. You may not have a boyfriend or girlfriend this Valentine’s Day, but at least you didn’t have some creepy old murderer chasing after you as a child, even as he erases all evidence of your actual personality from his solipsistic and horrifyingly self-forgiving memoir. It’s the little things in life that get us through each day: coffee, kitten videos, and the lack of pedophile stalkers.