At just 17 years old, Alisson Wood began a dangerous entanglement with a creative writing teacher at her school, who gifted her a copy of Nabokov’s Lolita. To hear “Mr. North” tell it, Lolita is the ultimate love story—a narrative the young Alisson bought into, until she grew older and learned to see the tale for what it really is: a grim account of predation and abuse.