It would be easy to dismiss Nancy Jones' debut novel, a retelling of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, as an unnecessary pastiche of a brilliant classic. But that would be missing the point: Jones' mistake is not in trying to imitate Nabokov, but in imitating him too closely. Molly's story is told by Betsy Thurmont, a childhood friend of the title character. (While Jones adheres slavishly to Lolita's main plot, she changes minor details throughout, including the names: Molly for Lolita, Richard Richard for Humbert Humbert, William Tennessee for Quilty the playwright, and so on.) Betsy and Molly are separated as children, and Betsy subsequently spends decades recalling her old playmate with melodramatic phrases and eroticized images scarcely less disturbed and invasive than Humbert's in the original book. Betsy's gushy, pretentious elegies are painful to read, but they're also baffling. Why, when trying to present Lolita from a fresh new angle, would Jones attempt to duplicate Humbert's detached, stuffy, Old World writing style? And why through such an inappropriate character? Molly's diaries, by contrast, conjure up a believable, touching voice for Nabokov's heroine, an abused and neglected child who learned the usefulness of sexuality long before she learned about sex. Her lapses into French, doggerel, and saccharine fantasies about Hollywood stardom all ring true to the original book, while her contemptuous view of Richard stands in stark contrast to his own poisonously poetic self-justifications. But Jones glosses over what could have been the most daring parts of Molly: the periods during which Lolita disappears from Nabokov's story. Molly's time with Richard is chronicled in depth, but her escape, her subsequent life, and the events that changed her from a petulant brat into a mellow housewife are all covered in a few vague, speculative pages. Where Jones' creativity should have been most free to explore her character, she hides behind the classic she's parroting. In the process, she reduces Molly from a potentially engaging speculative story to a sterile echo of a far better book.