Tampa
A Novel
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3.7 • 38 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“In this sly and salacious work, Nutting forces us to take a long, unflinching look at a deeply disturbed mind, and more significantly, at society’s often troubling relationship with female beauty.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
In Alissa Nutting’s novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student.
Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure.
Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psycho–esque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire. Laced with black humor and crackling sexualized prose, Alissa Nutting’s Tampa is a grand, seriocomic examination of the want behind student / teacher affairs and a scorching literary debut.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Nutting's graphic first novel (after her story collection, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls), soon-to-be eighth-grade English teacher Celeste Price can barely contain her excitement about her adolescent boys; the 26-year-old passes the night "in an excited loop of hushed masturbation" while her good-looking but dull-witted husband slumbers. Celeste's mind is as pragmatic as her body is luscious, and her patience ("I had to regard the students like a delicate art exhibit and stay six feet away at all times, lest I be tempted to touch") pays off. Before long, she coaxes shy Jack into what becomes the first of many liaisons. Unlike American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, Celeste is aware of her depravity she fears that were she to work as a model, as some suggest, photos would capture "a soulless pervert" but she indulges anyway. Her bold choice of meeting Jack at his house after school leads to unsurprising complications, as does the boy's budding love. When Celeste's usual caution erodes, all might be lost were this young woman not lover and fighter both. Nutting's work creates a solid impression of Celeste's psychopathic nature but, unlike the much richer Lolita, leaves the reader feeling empty.
Customer Reviews
Deeply uncomfortable
Loved this story in the same way I loved American Psycho. A reprehensible tale told by a morally repugnant protagonist, that somehow keeps you invested, and wanting to keep reading.
Very well written
If you can get over some of the subject matter (which if you've ever seen game of thrones, you should be fine with this) it's actually quite a well written story. You can tell it's meant to bring up controversy, similar but also entirely different than Lolita. The main character is perverted but it doesn't seem as if the author is justifying it at all, in fact the entire book is about self image and making the character SEEM innocent when she herself knows she is not. Good flow and overall decent quick read.