Teach Me
-
- £5.49
-
- £5.49
Publisher Description
A TEENREADS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • “A raw and dazzling portrait of obsession and betrayal.”—Holly Black, bestselling author of Valiant and Tithe
I don’t want to think about anything that takes me away from thinking about him . . .
It overwhelms me that I overwhelm him . . .
This is what is real, the times we spend together and nothing else . . .
When a student and teacher cross the line and disrupt the very boundary of their relationship, an intense story unfolds answering the many questions of how this forbidden situation could occur, what implications plague the young student, and what if anything this means about life and love.
Teach Me invites readers inside an experience that fascinates everyone—an affair between a teacher and student—and gives an up-close-and-personal answer to the question: How does this happen?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although Nelson shows courage in tackling a controversial topic the sexual relationship between a teacher and high-school student too much rings false in this contemporary debut novel. The affair itself seems highly improbable. Narrator Carolina, a senior who is "a little top-heavy in the sciences," takes a poetry class and falls head-over-heels in love with her English teacher, Mr. Mann, who starts visiting her at the hamburger joint where she works. One night after work he leads her behind the local Wal-Mart for the first of many make-out sessions (Mr. Mann does have the sense to wait until Carolina turns 18 before he sleeps with her). Despite the flirting that goes on at school, no one (not even Carolina's best friend Schuyler, who knows she has a crush on her teacher) suspects how far things have gone. The affair ends abruptly when Mr. Mann becomes engaged to another woman, and Carolina resorts to some childish acts of revenge. Even readers who are able to swallow the melodramatic events may have trouble believing the heroine, who is smart enough to throw out obscure references ("Keep your war girdle on, Hippolyte," she tells Schuyler), yet too na ve to see that she is being victimized. The book sends a mixed message to young adults. It's unclear what, if anything, Carolina has learned from her mistakes, and in a dramatic rescue scene, Mr. Mann, who is never penalized for his sexual and emotional abuse, is cast disturbingly as a tragic hero. Ages 14-up.
