| Roger Fishbite | |
| Author: | Emily Prager |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Publisher: | Random House |
| Pub Date: | November 1999 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 187 |
| Isbn: | 9780679410539 |
| Oclc: | 39143159 |
| Dewey: | 813.54 |
| Congress: | PS3566.R25 |
Roger Fishbite is a novel by the American writer and journalist Emily Prager, which was published in 1999.
The novel was written partly as a literary parody of Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita, partly as a "reply both to the book and to the icon that the character Lolita has become."[1] It tells the story of thirteen-year-old Lucky Lady Linderhoff, and her mother, and their lodger, whom Lucky calls Roger Fishbite.[2]
While taking its inspiration from Nabokov's Lolita, Prager's novel is narrated by Lucky, not Fishbite, and displays a number of twists and turns that differ from the original text. Prager also updates the story, setting it in the modern-day period, rather than choosing to set it in the 1950s.[3]
At the heart of the novel is the issue that Lucky raises constantly throughout: The way in which children in America (and western society in general, I would add) are hated and feared by a society that seeks to eroticise them whilst at the same time destroying them.[4]
What prevents the novel from devolving into an inside joke is the enthralling voice of Lucky Linderhof, who, at nearly 15, tells her tale with the world-weariness befitting an elder statesman of child abuse.[5]