MR: For me, Jansy's notion of absence-as-presence seems most akin to my experience of the book. But I have only read it cover-to-cover twice, and it may be that Suellen's more thorough immersion in the book has revealed to her an actual presence that I have not yet discerned.  (Insert here VN's comments about the botanist specializing in lilies.) When I mentioned accessing Lo's subjectivity, I was asking myself, can I think as Dolores thinks? Can I know what she was thinking as these events happened? For me, the answer is only 'yes' if I am speaking very generally--I was once a child, so I can understand the tragedy of a broken childhood. I do not, however, feel like I can get inside Dolores's mind to anywhere near the extent that I can enter HH's.

SSH: absence-as presence is a very Nabokovian notion, No? The sky BETWEEN the branches, the infinity of time BETWEEN beats. No wonder then, that the “very poetic girl” in Lolita is constructed of this dreamspace:>)