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 … 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.
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Holy crap. I found myself rooting for the sociopath just so I could see what the heck she’d do. The writing was colorful and original. I loved it.
While the subject matter of this book was incredibly taboo and often uncomfortable, that is perhaps what made this such a great book.
The writing, the emotional descriptors, and the way the author puts you in Celeste’s head made me feel like I’d done something deplorable and forgotten to cover it up – not a good feeling at all, but an incredible …
An excellent and clear-headed look into the thinking of a sociopath. Clever writing, good use of suspense.
Inappropriate teacher student relationships, but fascinating look into a pedophile’s fucked up mind.
I suppose today steamy is too strong a description when Cosmo magazine
publishes vivid description monthly. But Tampa was fun to read for
its light matter-of-fact porn that no one makes a fuss about any more.
So be it.
There are almost no words to describe this book that could really capture the uncomfortable, wild, entrancing experience that it is. It’s brilliantly written and terrifyingly addictive. American Psycho meets…Bridget Jones? Just read it.
Disturbing story, very well-written. The central character is perfectly described.
Not a literary gem. A little on the trashy side. Quick read.
Didn’t really care for it, not my “cup of tea”. I have a hard time with a book about a pedophile. Many other much better reads out there.
Started and not finished. Woman too annoying. May finish but not desperate to see how it turns out.
It was dirty in the nasty sense without being erotic. Total trash
DIdn’t want to even give it one star
Disgusting. I didn’t even finish it.
Takes you into the mind of a pedophile, in this case a woman who is sexually obsessed with boys on the verge of pubescence. She is every bit as cunning and dangerous as any predator.
Might be hard for some people to read.
Disturbing being inside Celeste Price’s head. Although Celeste is an attractive 26-year-old woman, who boys and certainly men would enjoy looking at and fantasizing about, she is a sexual predator. The manner in which she sees her young male students makes them appear even more innocent and vulnerable. Her cunning manipulation of both the boys and …
I am no pearl clutcher but damn…
I DNFed it at about 20% so that I could go take 27 showers and pour acid in my eyes just to forget the words I’d read.
This book is vile; I felt like shock was the only tool in the author’s toolbox and she wielded it like a hammer.
My brain was the nail.
No thanks….ever.
This is not pleasant to read, I could’t finish because I found it so disturbing.
Wow. If you aren’t prepared for debauchery and your limits to be pushed, this probably isn’t the book for you. You’re transported into the world of pedophilia through the lense of a woman who seems to have it all; but pursues the forbidden. Just when you’ve planted your “this is my line!” Flag you are brought to the realization of how far past it …
Very disturbing but funny
Very earthy. Every sentence is intricately crafted to include the maximum amount of sexual material. It gets a bit reputations. I didn’t finish it. At least not yet. I was curious to learn about thinking as they do their deeds. I never really got that far.
Too trashy.