Tampa

by Alissa Nutting

Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She is attractive. She drives a red Corvette. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed and devoted to her. But Celeste has a secret. She has a singular sexual obsession - fourteen-year-old boys. It is a craving she pursues with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought.

Within weeks of her first term at a new school, Celeste has lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web - car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack's house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming encounters in Celeste's empty classroom between periods. It is bliss.

Celeste must constantly confront the forces threatening their affair - the perpetual risk of exposure, Jack's father's own attraction to her, and the ticking clock as Jack leaves innocent boyhood behind. But the insatiable Celeste is remorseless. She deceives everyone, is close to no one and cares little for anything but her pleasure.

With crackling, stampeding, rampantly sexualized prose, Tampa is a grand, satirical, serio-comic examination of desire and a scorching literary debut.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Contemporary, Thriller, Adult, Dark, Crime

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 2, 2013

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

hoo boy.

this is one of those books that people are going to have opinions about.and i look forward to people getting all angry and hysterical at me for liking it. for liking it a lot. because the subject matter is pretty ick, right? who is going to be all out and proud saying they liked a book about pedophilia if it doesn't come from the pen of nabokov? (hebephilia, sure, but still...) but it's a pretty accomplished book.

i mean, what does it set out to do? it sets out to get you in the head of a sexual predator. well, guess what? success!! you are in there but good.and it is decidedly uncomfortable.this is about "know thy enemy." and she does. i thought a.m. homes nailed the subject matter with The End of Alice, but this one just takes it one sticky foot further.

and i mean, shit, how many monsterotica books have i read now? it's not like icky sex is something i shy away from. and i read my monsterporn clinically, because i think they are funny, and the sex just sorta slides off my eyes. and that's what this is, only it's more horrifying than funny. i know it's completely different but it feels like the same level of transgression - people putting their genitals where they have no business being. i mean, really, why would you ever want to have sex with a teenage boy?? they are not sexy,and don't you have a better use for your three minutes??

so that's out of the way.

next point: is this just a lay-dee writing a backwards-Lolita? well, yes and no. that is definitely part of the novelty of this ...erm, novel, but it is more than that.

someone asked me what this book was about, and i said "pedophilia. it's about a female teacher who seduces her fourteen-year-old suitor."

and they said, "oh, that doesn't count."

i was intrigued, so i pressed it.

"what do you mean??"

"when you say 'a pedophile walks into a room,' and it turns out to be a woman, it's like 'what is this, the wnba??"

which cracked me up, but in a way, it kind of illuminates the way we deal with teenage sexuality.we still couch things in those antiquated terms of the slut and the player.little girls are cautioned that they are losing something or giving something up but with boys it is still dealt with in terms of conquest, of rite of passage, of coming of age. and what teenage boy wouldn't want to sleep with his ultra-hot teacher, given the opportunity? it's still criminal, but somehow less victim-y.

and, no, i do not have children nor do i deal with them in my day-to-day, but i watch svu, so i know what's what.

our popular literature is growing darker:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,The Dinner,Gone Girl, and even Fifty Shades of Grey.this is the shit the world is made of, and our literature reflects it. the reality is that there are beautiful people with sick minds who might not get caught.literature, like life, never promised you justice.



and all

is she a sympathetic character? no way. is she redeemed, is she symbolic, is she punished? nope.but it is a quaint and infantile stance for readers to need to like their protagonists. it's a little adorable, but it ignores the loooong tradition of the antihero in fiction, and i get really frustrated when i hear people whining that they didn't like a book because the protagonist was a jerk or a sociopath, or a pedophile. not every book is going to be written by nicholas sparks.

but back to lolita.this is completely different from lolita, in its treatment. lolita was a one-sided love story. this one is about need and obsession. it is eroticism without attachment. she is pure predator consuming what she needs. i'm not sure if that makes this more or less problematic. probably more. i think we are more forgiving with star-crossed, impossible lovers than we are with someone who has an itch to scratch and doesn't care who gets hurt in the scratching. and it is more realistic this way; more troubling.

she has her compulsions, and she is dangerously able to justify her needs, while allowing that they are "wrong" to the world at large:

Sex struck me as a seafood with the shortest imaginable half-life, needing to be peeled and eaten the moment the urge ripened. Even by sixteen, seventeen, it seemed that people became too comfortable with their desires to have any objectivity over their vulgar movements. They closed their eyes to avoid awkward orgasm faces, slipped lingerie made for models and mannequins onto wholly imperfect bodies. Who was that queen who tried to keep her youth by bathing in the blood of virgins? She should've had sex with them instead, or at least had sex with them before killing them. Many might label this a contradiction, but I felt it to be a simple irony: in my view, having sex with teenagers was the only way to keep the act wholesome. They're observant; they catalogue every detail to obsess upon. They're obsessive by nature. Should there be any other way to experience sex?I remember taking my shirt off for a friend's younger brother in college. The way his eyes lit up like he was seeing snow for the first time.

(and i am totally posting text from the ARC, which is a reviewer no-no, but for a book that deals with taboo in such a fearless way, i feel it is apt)

that passage definitely reminds me of that staggeringly good 2-3 pages in Beautiful Losers, where i came dangerously close to understanding the attraction to very young girls. which is just cohen's power as a writer, and nothing to do with any latent criminality in me.

this a selfish situation because it is not about the act, but about the transgression itself; the taboo. it's about taking and teaching and uneven power systems.

"I won't tell," he said, his arms holding my waist with amateur stiffness. I smiled, thinking about the lover he'd become and all the things he'd try with me for the very first time. I'd be the sexual yardstick for his whole life: Jack would spend the rest of his days trying but failing to relive the experience of being given everything at a time when he knew nothing. Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he'd have afterwards would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing equation. The numbers could never be as favorable as they were right now, when his naivety would be subtracted from my experience to produce the largest sum of astonishment possible.

right there, she inadvertently acknowledges jack's future difficulties, in his vie sexuelle, but she just does not care.

i understand, intellectually, the desire of taking someone before they have learned anything and imprinting them with what you like, but whooo, those are deep and dark waters.

her lucidity is what is most disturbing, for me. she is so preoccupied with aging, which is par for the course when it comes to beautiful women, but her particular bent will become more difficult as she ages, and she revolts against the betrayal of the body in the aging process:

There was no way for women, for anyone, to gracefully age.After a certain point, any detail like the woman's cheerleader hairstyle that implied youth simply looked ridiculous. Despite her athletic prowess, the jogger's cratered thighs seemed more like something that would die one day than something that would not. I didn't know how long I had before this window slammed down on my fingers as well - with diligence, and avoiding children, perhaps a decade. The older i became, the harder it would be to get what I wanted, but that was probably true of everyone with everything.

and:

I knew I'd find it hard to cut the girls in my classes any slack at all, knowing the great generosity life had already gifted them. They were at the very beginning of their sexual lives with no need to hurry - whenever they were ready, a great range of attractions would be waiting for them, easy and disposable. Their urges would grow up right alongside them like a shadow. They'd never feel their libido a deformed thing to be kept chained up in the attic of their mind and to only be fed in secret after dark.

but there is, occasionally, small moments where there is a glimmer of something potentially salvageable in her:

At times, I wished that my genitals were prosthetic, something I could slip out of.

i do think this is a controversial novel, but it is brilliantly written. and you can get all emotional and "think of teh children," on it, but that's not really useful.this is something that happens, and i would rather not live in a cave, wearing blinders, reading nicholas sparks. i wanna be informed.

if this makes no sense, blame the pinot.

come to my blog!

[Emily May · Rating 4 out of 5]

Believe me, I can easily understand all the negative reactions to this book but I can't help but find it absolutely fascinating.

In fact, since putting the book down, I've given myself a while to think about it and, the more I do, the more I find myself acknowledging how clever and brilliant it is. And even feminist in a way, but I'll get to that later. You should be aware, if you haven't already gathered from other reviews, this book is full of vile descriptions and crude language. Being inside Celeste's head makes you feel like you need a good long shower afterwards and if you're not ready for graphic descriptions of the female anatomy and masturbation methods, then you're not ready for this book. No details are spared here: you have been warned.

The story is about eighth-grade teacher, Celeste Price, who on the outside appears to be everything anyone would want to be: attractive, intelligent, happily married... but underneath the surface lurks a secret she has kept hidden since she was fourteen years old. A secret desire for fourteen year old boys. It plagues her every thought, every step, every move. In private, all she can think about are ways to act upon her longing. She wants to set herself up in a position to engage in an affair with one of the objects of her desire. And eventually, an opportunity arises. Celeste begins a sexual relationship with the fourteen year old Jack. She pursues him, seduces him and uses him to fulfill her sexual needs. There is no love or romance in this story. The only one fooled is Jack. Celeste is not another Humbert in that she never attempts to convince the reader or herself that what she does is for love. It's all about sex.

What this book does, above everything else, is make us question the gendered view we have of sexual relationships. We are inside Celeste's mind, getting a good look at how perverted, depraved and even sociopathic she is, so we experience outrage at the way society and the law allow her to escape justice because she is an attractive young woman. There's an assumption still often being made that women are the passive gender in a sexual relationship and that men are natural predators/aggressors. It's hard for us to imagine a woman sexually abusing a man. This question is even asked in the book: "If you were a teenage male, would you call a sexual experience with her abuse?" A teen girl with a male teacher is considered a victim of his evil manipulation - a passive victim without a sexuality of her own coming into play. But a teen boy with a female teacher is victim of nothing more than the perfect teen male fantasy. Can attractive women really be rapists? Isn't Celeste just giving the boys what they want? Doesn't that make it okay? These are the questions one might ask if they weren't living inside her mind.

While the disgusting and graphic language left me feeling uncomfortable at times, I also felt it was completely necessary to make the point effectively. The point being that a woman can be as much of a sexual predator as a man and that teen boys can be as much of a victim as teen girls. If we'd been treated to something akin to Humbert's narrative in Lolita, if it was our sympathy that Celeste looked for, I think the important message would be completely missed. We needed Celeste to be a monster and a sexual predator to show that women can be. And to show how female monsters often go unpunished because of their gender. It reminded me of Gillian Flynn's characters and the way she creates such fantastically evil women. It's strange, I suppose, to consider that creating female murderers and rapists is a form of feminism but I think it serves to break down ideas we hold about gender. I also think it's incredibly important to acknowledge male abuse by females because it does happen and nowhere near enough is written about it. It's such a taboo subject that male victims often feel ashamed of it and unable to get help.

I have to confess: I quite liked the language. Well, okay, perhaps "like" is the wrong word but I really appreciate crude honesty in books, particularly when the author utilises language the way this author does. I'm not sure we needed such a graphic description of Celeste's vagina and her masturbation methods but, what the hell, it certainly achieved it's purpose with me. And, strange as it may sound, there was an odd beauty to the author's writing that gave a certain artistry to such descriptions. They were gross, naturally, but weirdly poetic.

One thing that is true most of all about Tampa: it makes you think. I put it down and literally spent about an hour sat there, just going over everything in my head. I thought about the way we view relationships, what this means for both men and women, victims and rapists; I thought about the judicial system and the way the law isn't about guilty/not guilty but the show you put on (which admittedly made me sing Razzle Dazzle from Chicago); I'm still thinking about it all now. One thing I can say for certain - I'm really glad I picked this up.

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for sheer audacity and fearlnessness. This book has some issues but Nutting has completely committed to her premise of a hot, twenty-something female teacher/pedophile. People are going to have LOTS to say about this book. There are going to be comparisons to Lolita and American Psycho but the similarities between Tampa and those books are on the surface only. In Tampa, Celeste is her desires and the plot is how she goes about satisfying those desires. To say this novel is explicit would be to put it mildly. What Nutting does particularly well is put us directly into Celeste's body, the terrifying heat of it. Much more to say later. There is no other book like this, that's for sure.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get it – the vagina on the cover looks like a buttonhole – clever, that. Book cover of the year!

This book is based on the real-life case of Debra Lafave, who was busted in, yes, Tampa in 2005 for "Lewd or Lascivious Battery" against a 14 year old boy. She was his teacher. She was 23 at the time.

As you may know, this deliquescent, oozing and dripping Boylita novel is about as un-pc as you can get. Whereas Mr Nabokov’s brilliant Lolita skirts around the actual sex because that was probably the very last thing our Vlad wanted to write about and also because they would have put him in prison if he had, Tampa revels in every lubricious manoeuvre, every genital twitch, pulse and torque detailed, every orifice given the attention a marine biologist devotes to the life cycle of the sea anemone. These sections are as porny as can be. Two questions then assault the reader –

1) is this erotic? Are you getting turned on? If so, please note you are getting turned on by descriptions of a 26 year old female teacher and a just turned 14 year old boy. You know, like, ew. But hey, you say, that’s okay, because this is a fiction. You know, fantasy. It’s made up. So it’s okay.

Well, 2) how about mentally reversing the sexes, so that it’s a 26 year old male teacher and a just turned 14 year old girl. Yeah, maybe then the it’s-just-fantasy thing wouldn’t work. I wonder why that might be? Someone should try to get a reversed-gender Tampa published and report back. So we seem to have a novel about this giant gender attitude imbalance thing here.

We can say with some confidence that Miss Nutting has written a deliberately provocative novel (and has got a lot of people’s attention I understand). It is true that occasionally, very occasionally, you get a case where a woman sexually harasses a man at work. Out of ten gazillion cases of sexual harassment, you get one where the man is the victim. And this case gets on the news (because it’s so rare) and Michael Douglas makes a movie about it . This then provides limitless joy to all the creeps who then say there you are, women are just as bad as men. Of course, they aren’t – one Aileen Wuornos does not a thousand Ted Bundys equate to. One husband beater does not balance out the billion wife beaters on the planet. But the creeps like to say it does, looking for an excuse to call women and especially feminists a few names, get some of their own back, since they’ve been backed into a corner lately and they pine for the days where you could get away with murder.

When you write about these rare exceptions, it’s like you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy, you’re giving them this ammunition. When one feminist organised a conference about female paedophilia, other feminists turned up for the sole reason of shouting abuse at her and shutting it all down :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCpr3h...

TAMPA VS LOLITA

There is no comparison between Tampa and Lolita in terms of style – I know that Alissa Nutting has a breathtaking turn of phrase on occasion from reading her great collection ( Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls ) but in Tampa she’s in character – Celeste Price is a chilly misanthropic paedophile – she has no friends, no relations, hates her husband and strongly dislikes her work colleagues - so her first person account of the whole debacle is in appropriately businesslike and brisk language except for the descriptions of the sex. But one thing both novels stress in exactly the same way – both Humbert and Celeste are fixated on children of a very specific age, and as soon as they grow past that age and their bodies change, there’s no attraction any more, and they drop the one they have been having like a hot potato, and seek a new model.

I think this novel is hard to love and actually not that easy to like, either. It throws you into the moral maze which I have suggested above. The boys involved LOVE their school detentions with their hot blonde teacher, you bet they do. Even when she has to impart something disagreeable, she has a way of softening the blow:


“Put your hands on my breasts,” I instructed. “I have to tell you something traumatic and you need to be reminded of all the good that’s here in the world for you to enjoy.” Wordlessly, Jack clutched his palms onto my breasts and swallowed.
“Your father had a heart attack.”


But Celeste, I fear, is in the end a fictitious character by which I mean fake. Even though based on a real case, I couldn’t believe in her for one moment. She’s 100% obsessed with getting her rocks off with a 14 year old boy. All the time. Morning noon and night. Never exhausted when there’s a 14 year old in the house. Never says no. She’s like the great Mae West one-liner : “I’m feeling rather tired tonight, boys – three of you will have to go home”. Celeste is, in fact, like those rather unrealistic representations of women in porn. Just because she has a deviant sexual predilection surely doesn’t therefore mean she’s The Beast with the Unstoppable Loins – isn’t that like giving your villain a cruel moustache and penchant for squashing small animals?

What Celeste does have is a fabulous line in narcissism :

I wondered what percentage of the Jefferson Junior High students – if I came to them in the middle of the night, naked – would agree to have sex with me even if it would mean they’d die forty-eight hours later. I guessed there would be at least a small few.

and

Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he’d have afterward would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing comparison.

A semi-tumescent 3.5 stars, then, and some Kleenex.

[Crumb · Rating 5 out of 5]

✫✫✫✫✫ Compelling, Explosive, and Controversial Stars!


This book is truly disturbing in its nature. If you are triggered easily with graphic sexual language and content, than don't go anywhere near this book. As creepy and unsettling as Tampa was, I couldn't put it down.

Celeste Price is a twenty-something, married woman who is living a double life. She is not attracted to her husband. In fact, her husband is about twenty years too old for her. And this is the where and why of it all when she hatches a plan to work as a junior high teacher, in a guise, to lure in her next victim.

Celeste was one of the most vile protagonist's I've ever encountered in literature. She was narcissistic, lacked accountability, and was decidedly self-centered. Not once did it occur to her that what she was doing was wrong. I hated her instantly. It was this very hatred however, that made her fascinating to read about.

This book was uncomfortable, in a "that's a horrible accident, I can't stop looking" type of way.It was dirty and it was gritty and I kept feeling the urge to hand sanitize. But overall, it shined a light on a real issue that is playing out in classrooms all over America. There are some teachers that misuse their authority inappropriately, whether it's a male or female. Although, I will say this. When it's a woman, the media tackles it in a different way - as if its more taboo. So, when I came across Tampa, for this reason alone, it piqued my interest.

I can't stress the trigger warning here, because I don't want ANYONE going into this one blind. There isn't any forced sexual encounters, but there are statutory rape scenarios.

This book was literary and controversial and it was unputdownable. Nutting is a true talent, not to be ignored.

[Scarlet · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

I'm giving Tampa such a low rating not because it was disgusting but because it was so disappointing. Believe it or not, I liked the idea of this book. It was the way the plot played out that irked me and in the end, I'm afraid it did not have the intended effect on me.

Tampa started off brilliantly. I had my doubts, having read countless reviews that called it vulgar but 10 pages in and I was *gasp* liking it. Yes it was vulgar but it was also witty, brazen, horrifying and compelling. Juggling shock and humor is not easy, especially with a topic like pedophilia but Nutting had it all in control. I kept bursting into involuntary giggles and had to guiltily chastise myself for laughing at something as outrageous as this.

What struck me most about that first half was the underlying confidence in the writing. It was re-assuring, like Nutting had her eyes set on the destination and all I had to do was follow her lead.

But then we lost our way. And by the time we found the right one, it was too late. I was exhausted and did not care.

So our narrator is Celeste Price - 26, blond, beautiful and a pedophile. She takes up a teaching job in a middle-school at Tampa with the sole purpose of preying on "suitable" students to satisfy her sexual urges. She zeroes in on 14-year-old Jack Patrick and successfully seduces him, leading to an affair. Nutting does not hold back; we are privy to Celeste's every sexual encounter and darkest desire.

As unpleasant as it is to read, I feel the lewd, lascivious tone is warranted. We are inside Celeste's head and Celeste is vulgar, so why shouldn't the book be? What bothered me was how I kept forgetting that Jack was 14, a child. A major chunk of the second half felt like a teacher-student erotica, but not necessarily a child-adult affair, so the sex-scenes weren't horrifyingly erotic like they should have been; they were just plain erotic. And once Jack's father was dragged into the whole mess... it was a complete nosedive. The satire no longer worked and the shock-factor was so overused that I'd stopped reacting to the many blowjob scenes.

Eventually, Tampa does reach where it's supposed to, but in a very rushed, unpolished manner. It makes some interesting points about how society views female sex-offenders and how beautiful people can get away with almost anything but these points were mere observations I made, they did not really hit me. Maybe because there's not much foundation there to lend emphasis to these points. The trial is merely skimmed over - fast-forward to verdict. That last scene should have outraged me, I know, but I didn't feel it. I was just shaking my head in disappointment.

In fact, I think I've gained more insight from Nutting's interviews than from the book.

Many have lauded the characterization of Celeste but I disagree. I found her remarkably uncomplicated. Everything in Celeste's universe revolves around her desire to be with 14-year-old kids and it's shocking in the beginning but once you get used to the idea, you can predict her every reaction. So when Celeste is in jail and she's worried about not having access to face-creams, I was not surprised at all. She has a one-track mind, how is that sophisticated?

Also, I have trouble thinking of Celeste as a person. If I read a book about a monster, I expect to feel for a moment, no matter how fleeting, some kind of positive emotion for the monster. Pity, or sympathy, or just a basic understanding maybe? But there is nothing redeemable about Celeste. She could, for all the difference it makes, be a robot that is programmed to track prepubescent boys and who must have sex with them to recharge its batteries. The only thing I felt for Celeste was varying degrees of disgust and well, I don't need a book to tell me that pedophiles are disgusting.

Even the other characters, not one of them sparked any kind of emotional reaction in me. I was either disgusted by them or felt nothing for them.

Overall, Tampa is not a bad book. It's a brave attempt on Nutting's part and I appreciate the idea but despite the very high shock-value, I found the book mundane and unmemorable.

I've not given up on Nutting however. I'm impressed with her writing and guts, so I will watch out for her next book.


*With thanks to Netgalley for the free digital copy*

[Felicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ford, like the husbands of most women who marry for money, is far too old. Since I'm twenty-six myself, it's true that he and I are close peers. But thirty-one is roughly seventeen years past my window of sexual interest."

HOLY SHIT

Mrs Price, an 8th grade teacher, has an unadulterated sexual obsession with 14 year old boys. Not just any 14 year old boy, but lesser developed boys. Once any sign of manhood manifests itself, she not only loses interest, she is repulsed.

WTF

This story is told entirely from the POV of Celeste Price. She has no shame in telling you, in detail, about her overt sexual proclivities, including graphic descriptions of her sexual trysts with boys.

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

This sexual fixation runs her life. Every moment of her existence is spent finding ways to satiate the insatiable.

CUCKOO, CUCKOO

"With a dull roar, the buses began rolling by and my eyes followed them like I was watching a shell game at a carnival: all of them looked identical, but one had a prize inside. Which bus was Jack’s?"

DAMN

Nutting is an exceptional and courageous writer offering an in depth look into the psychopathic mind of a sexual predator that leaves the reader questioning everything they've ever thought about this timely subject.

BRAVO

My thoughts on the female teacher/male student relationship has been forever altered.


I have to mention that cover! It's brilliant. You'll have to buy a physical copy of the book to truly appreciate its significance.


*Note to the author: the car was first introduced as a Camaro then became a Corvette and Corvettes don't have backseats.

[Shawn McComb · Rating 5 out of 5]

what theee fukkkk….. so unbelievably disturbing, 5 stars

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you haven't read this book, I advise you to please approach with caution if you plan to.

It's about a woman.

She is a sexual predator and is entirely fixated on fourteen-year-old boys.

At first, I readied my puke-bucket as I was preparing to read this book. (I listened to the audiobook.)

And granted, I did start out feeling sick, yet from the start, I was fully entertained by this main character and what was going on in her head.

She was just so fascinating.

When she felt disgusted, I felt disgusted along with her. When she was angry and disappointed, I was right there with her.

This, my friends, is the power of good writing. Making you root for a character you would absolutely shame in real life.

I'm not saying that reading and feeling along with this character turned me into this pedo-accepting person, lol. Never.

What I'm certainly saying, though, is that I was rooting for her and hated everyone who worked against her.

Let's take the character Jack, for example.

For most of this book, Jack is fourteen years old, and he is fascinated and even claims to be in love with the heroine. I never saw Jack as a victim, because even though, I know that the heroine pursued him, had her eyes on him and advanced on him like the predator she is, I instead ended up hating Jack for his stupid run at one point in the book that eventually causes the heroine's downfall.

To me, the heroine is the true victim here.

And I also felt bad for her getting caught and going to prison for a while because of (stupid Jack.)

I didn't pity her, but I figured out her problem, and it is such a big one yet simple.

She had an obsession with preserving youth. She constantly brought up how in, in the future, her body will lose its beauty. And that her sexuality will be more difficult to pursue.

To me, this is a very relatable thing.

I may not care about youth and beauty as much as others, but I know many who do, and they could easily be her.

The heroine's mind is so preoccupied with preserving youth, preserving her body's sexual prowess, that this obsession ended up driving her sexuality into a fixation with (youthful) boys.

And yes, I am in fact saying that any of us can be her, if we are not careful:

So into our looks and youth that we become prisoners of our own sexuality.

And yes, the heroine is a prisoner.

She can't escape it.

Even after the awful boys she meddled with sexually ended up getting her in trouble, she still went back to doing the same thing: sleeping with minors.

And yes, I am wholly aware that this review would have been vastly different on my part if the heroine was a man. Not denying that. (In fact, I don't think I would have been comfortable reading it all, if the main character were a man...)

Why? Because I know this type of woman mostly exists in fiction. There's not really any female sexual predators in real life. There is, but comparing it to men is like counting the number of houses in your neighborhood to the number of stars in the whole entire universe.

And most of those "stars" don't really go after fourteen-year-olds, that's usually too old for them.

Comparing this heroine to "true" pedophiles is ridiculous.

That's all.

Anyway, that was a first for me.

If any of you ever end up reading this, let me know what you think.

Lastly, I must applaud Alissa Nutting.

She is one of the most incredible authors I have ever had the pleasure of reading from. This book amazed me and inspired me to write my own "Tampa" of sort...

The character she created touched me so much that my brain started to create its own complicated, flawed and dangerous heroine.

EDIT: Some readers took offence to my review. Let me clarify some points:

I did not say female predators only existed in fiction, I said they MOSTLY did. There's a difference.

I also didn't mean to imply that predators who went after fourteen-year-olds weren't true predators. I just mean that there are worst predators out there and they abuse even younger, more innocent children.

I mean, right now, as we speak, men are râping babies. LITERAL babies... so, I don't think women are what we should be worrying about when it comes to depraved/abusive sxual behavior towards innocents.

By the way, I still stand by everything I said in this review... if you disagree and want to have a discussion, insulting me is not the way to do that. I will dismis you. I do not respond to insults/patronization.

Also, for everyone throwing a fit because I refer to the main character as "the heroine..."

I have no idea what y'all are on about...

Cause that's what she LITERALLY is... it's literally HER story. She is quite literarily/literally the heroine of this story, the protagonist of it...

I don't know what the fck y'all want me to call her...

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might very well be the smuttiest thing I've ever read. Aside from the Marquis de Sade, of course, or maybe Anais Nin. I wonder how many times the word "penis" turns up (ha) in these pages. I don't know the number, but it's a lot.

Be forewarned: these said pensises are underage ones. Fourteen year old ones, to be precise, and the subject of the fantasies of high school teacher Celeste Price.

In this gender-reversed version of Lolita, we are privy to Molest's I mean Celeste's lurid fantasies which are a far more graphic, female version of Humbert Humbert's. We learn that her marriage is a misery and all she longs for is sex with pubescent teenagers.

Sex struck me as a seafood with the shortest imaginable shelf life, needing to be peeled and eaten the moment the urge ripened.

We learn that she will do almost anything to make the fantasy reality. And she does.

I had to read this in small doses. There's definitely an "ick" factor here, despite superbly subversive and darkly humorous writing. There's an uncomfortability factor too, because while Celeste is most definitely a predator, there's a strange conflict one feels given that her victims are more than willing participants.

Alissa Nutting is fearless in advancing the plot to wild and extreme heights, which is exciting and kept me turning the pages even if I was rather sickened to see what would happen next.

But there's something dangerous about treading on Nabokov's path. You need to be really effing great to get away with it. I'm not entirely sure she did get away with it, either. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the story's gender reversal, and I think it worked really well in What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal . But Tampa didn't fully succeed for me. I think it's the smut, to be honest. It's the cover of this book adorned with a vagina-buttonhole and a sanitary-product-inspired title. I know that it's meant to be provocative (who could possibly miss that intention?) but it's kind of a cheap trick. The many, many pornographic sex scenes also become a cheap trick, no matter how well written they are. It brought to mind the expression English friends of mine use: "mutton dressed as lamb".

She's draped Nabokov over a piece of cleverly written, character-driven erotica. But she's not fooling me! This isn't serious literature. It's a compelling, tantalising, controversial, very readable piece of mutton.

3.75 stars

[Justin Tate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yikes! Was expecting a kind of trainwreck drama similar to “Notes on a Scandal” but this is closer to The Exorcist or Silence of the Lambs. Mrs. Price is every bit as terrifying as Hannibal Lecter.

Kudos to Alissa Nutting for taking on this subject in a daring way. There’s many times it seems to toe the line between art and obscene, but as a complete product every detail ends up contributing to the character’s disturbing mindset. Removing one star for the sheer ickiness factor, but it really is superbly written. Much more cohesive than her other novel Made for Love.

[Maede · Rating 3 out of 5]

تصور کن
یک معلم مدتی طولانی از شاگرد چهارده ساله‌اش سوءاستفاده جنسی می‌کنه

حالا بگو
در تصویر توی ذهنت اون معلم زنه یا مرده؟ اون شاگرد دختره یا پسره؟
احتمالاً اینجوریه: مرد، دختر

اما نه در این کتاب. سِلِست پرایس یک زن بی‌نهایت زیبای بیست و شش ساله‌ست که به هیچ‌چیز جز رابطه‌ی جنسی با پسرهای چهارده ساله فکر نمی‌کنه. در واقع تمام زندگیش رو به نحوی برنامه‌ریزی کرده که به این هدف نزدیک‌ترش کنه. اون یه شکارچیه که سال‌ها از پشت بوته‌ها به شکارش نگاه کرده و حالا آماده‌ی حمله شده

سِلِست همسر یک مرد پولدار شده تا موجه به نظر بیاد و زندگی مرفهی داشته که بتونه اهدافش رو دنبال کنه. از طرفی هم به دنبال شغل معلمی میره که بهترین پوشش رو برای خودش فراهم کنه. فرصتی که بتونه به پسرهای چهارده‌ ساله‌ای که باب میلش هستند دسترسی داشته باشه و اغواشون کنه

این کتاب به معنای واقعی کلمه کثافته. بخش اعظمی از کتاب توصیفات خودارضایی، رابطه جنسی به انواع مختلف و فانتزی‌های جنسیه. ولی تمام این‌ها آنچنان در لایه‌ای از مریضی جنسی، پدوفیلی و سواستفاده وحشتناک پیچیده شدند که به نظر من فاکتور اروتیک کاملاً ازشون تخلیه شده و به جاش تهوع و شوک باقی مونده. البته که قصد نویسنده هم دقیقاً همینه. داستان صحنه‌هایی داشت که فکر می‌کنم تا همیشه روی مغزم حک شد


اما، این سوال مطرح میشه که چرا کار سِلِست اشتباهه؟ مگه این پسر با همه‌ی وجود نمی‌خواد که باهاش رابطه داشته باشه؟ رابطه با یک زن فوق‌العاده‌ زیبا مگه آرزوی خیلی از پسرهای نوجوان نیست؟ اگر این «اجازه و خواستن» نیست پس چیه؟

اهمیت کتاب در اینه که اولاً ما رو از استانداردهای دوگانه راجع مسئله آزار جنسی پسران آگاه می‌کنه. چرا تصور اینکه رابطه‌ی یک دختر چهارده ساله با معلم مردش صد در صد تجاوز و اشتباهه برامون سخت نیست، اما در مورد برعکسش حداقل در ذهنمون به اون اندازه فاجعه به نظر نمیاد؟

دوم اینکه این کتاب یک سکونت موقت در ذهن یک نیمفومنیاک و پدوفیل بهت میده که در واقع فرصتی برای آنالیز این رفتارها از دید خود اون فرده

سوم اینکه در طول داستان بخشی از صدمات شدیدی که به قربانی وارد میشه نشان داده میشه. پسری که زندگیش رو خودخواهی و بیماری این زن برای همیشه زیر و رو می‌کنه و ضربه‌های ماندگاری هم به روانش وارد میشه

خواندن این داستان اصلاً راحت نیست و برای همه هم نیست. ولی با وجود دردی که برای ذهنم ایجاد کرد به تغییر تصویر در ذهن من کمک کرد. کتاب رو صوتی گوش دادم و اجرای بی‌نظیری داشت که همه چیز رو وخیم‌تر هم کرد. سختمه به این کتاب چهار ستاره بدم ولی به هیچ وجه سه ستاره هم نیست

کانال تلگرام ریویوها و دانلود کتاب‌ها و صوتیشون
Maede's Books

۱۴۰۱/۲/۳۱

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the surface, Celeste Price and her husband are the perfect couple. He's a cop and she teaches junior high. However, her secret ravenous lust for young boys threatens to tear them apart...

Yeah, this is one of those polarizing books. It asks the uncomfortable question "If a gorgeous 26 year old teacher wants to bed a very willing 14 year old student of hers, is it really rape?" A wise man once wrote "the best villain is the one who thinks he's the hero" and Celeste definitely thinks she's in the right.

The book is written in a funny, vulgar style, so much so that you forget you're reading about a sociopathic child predator at times. The style reminds me of a more humorous, more vulgar Megan Abbott. The plot, however, is a sexuallized reverse Lolita, I guess. Celeste pursues and persuades a boy into a sexual relationship with her and they furiously bump uglies until the train gets derailed. A couple derailments, in fact. In some ways, it reminds me of a Jim Thompson book. You can tell how abnormal Celeste is and know it's only a matter of time before everything goes to several shades of shit.

The book made me feel dirtier than the floor of a porno theater but it was compulsively readable. It simultaneously made me wish I had a Playboy centerfold for a teacher in eighth grade and made me glad I didn't.

Uncomfortable but readable is my final feeling on the book. It was a gripping read and I'll be interested to read whatever Alissa Nutting writes next. Four out of five stars.

[Mischenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Celeste Price is an eighth-grade teacher in Florida, who’s married to a police officer. Everyone thinks she’s extremely attractive and a wonderful teacher. She’s even been asked to mentor another less than mediocre teacher in her school. In truth, she’s a dangerous sexual predator who’s obsessed with 14-year-old boys. Everything she does revolves around her next encounter, and she daydreams—completely fixated on everything relating to sex with young boys.

I’m going to leave an informal review on this book and just say that it was one of the craziest books I’ve ever read. From the very first pages, the content is extremely disturbing. What’s even more bizarre is that I was compelled to finish this book and couldn’t put it down. The author takes you into the mind of this woman, and it’s deeply disturbing, twisted, perplexing, perverse, and just downright sick.

I’ve seen other reviews from friends on Goodreads stating that this is loosely based on a true story, but I haven’t been able to confirm it. To me this story is totally believable, but there were a few parts that seemed pretty contrived and convenient. What I wanted was good closure in the end with justice getting served, but what I got was a huge helping of injustice. The reader is left to wonder: will it ever end?

If I were to rate this book on the writing alone I’d easily give it five stars because it’s impeccable, but instead I’ll go with four because this was a story I didn’t necessarily enjoy. I’ll definitely read more from this author in the future.

4****

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

THIS READER HAS A LOT OF MIXED-UP FEELINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Tampa is a gleefully sardonic black comedy about a lovely young psychopath who preys on 14-year old boys in order to attain her primary goal in life: sexual satisfaction.

the first half of the book often made my skin crawl; I squirmed uncomfortably while reading about the cold-blooded machinations of a person - a teacher! - who is completely without empathy or morality, plotting and planning to take advantage of various minors.

THIS READER THOUGHT THAT SEXUAL PREDATOR CELESTE PRICE WAS A FAR MORE ENGAGING AND INSPIRING TEACHER THAN MOST OF THE TEACHERS HE HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF EXPERIENCING IN HIS YOUTH

Tampa is a work of erotic fiction and erotic fixation: the highly talented Nutting fills the novel with page after page of deliriously feverish sexual fantasia, highly pornographic descriptions of enflamed and engorged genitalia, and lovingly detailed accounts of the rituals performed to keep our heroine's body fragrant, supple, and ready to ensnare the male gender.

the second half of the book didn't creep me out to the degree of the first half; after the affair actually started, the devious plotting of the lovely young psychopath somehow unnerved me less - perhaps because the affair was of the sort that I had imagined myself in many times as a 14-year old boy in junior high, staring longingly at various attractive schoolteachers.

THIS READER TOLD HIS FRIEND THE SCHOOLTEACHER THAT HE WAS LESS DISTURBED WHEN THE SEX ACTUALLY STARTED HAPPENING BECAUSE THIS IS A COMMON ENOUGH FANTASY FOR TEENAGERS SO IT FELT LESS LIKE PREDATION, AND SHE THOUGHT THAT WAS REALLY FUCKED UP BECAUSE A PREDATOR IS A PREDATOR NO MATTER WHAT THE VICTIM THINKS

Tampa is not just disturbingly erotic, it is delightfully comic: Nutting knows how to write amusingly loaded but deadpan comments and nastily judgmental thoughts and evilly mean-spirited comic vignettes with all the skill and élan of a master misanthrope who is fully in charge of their powers.

I realized that if the genders were reversed or if the victims were younger than teenagers, I would have had a very different experience when reading this book.

THIS READER LAUGHED A LOT WHILE READING THIS BOOK! FROM BEGINNING TO END. BUT SOMETIMES IT WAS A GUILTY-FEELING LAUGH

Tampa seems to be confused by some readers with a work of serious literary merit or even a work of some psychological depth, when it is actually a work of much lesser scale: a pitch-black, exuberantly erotic farce... fun but quite shallow.

I think this book would have been a different book entirely if its sexual predator were not portrayed as a hilariously one-dimensional monomaniacal psycho... but instead as an actual human being with some seriously fucked up problems; the latter would be a book with actual depth but it would also be a book that sounds so potentially depressing and bleak that I would never have picked it up in the first place.

THIS READER THINKS THE AUTHOR SURE KNEW HOW TO PICK A TOPIC THAT WOULD GUARANTEE SHE MADE A WHOLE LOTTA MONEY

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

My bookshelves tell the story. Overwhelmingly, my taste runs to history. After that, there is a fair-sized collection of classic fiction, most of it read for vanity when I was younger. There is a smattering of contemporary fiction, usually a book that is so prevalent in the zeitgeist that failure to read it would mark me as hopelessly out of touch. Alas, lately, I’ve definitely become more comfortable being hopelessly out of touch.

So how do I explain Alissa Nutting’s Tampa? This slim novel tells the story of a beautiful young eighth-grade teacher who repeatedly statutorily rapes one of her students. It’s not history. It’s definitely not a classic. And I don’t think it ever took the pop culture world by storm. Yet it ended up in my hands, and I read it, cover to cover.

The answer, I’m sure you’re muttering to yourself, is simple. Matt is a pervert. You have some justification for this. I did, after all, read and review Richard Rhodes’s Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey and My Secret Life, a Victorian-era sex memoir.

But I’d like to think that this isn’t the sole reason. I like to think I just needed to see what the fuss was about. It’s a bit of literary rubbernecking. I wanted to know: Could this really be as controversial as the Harper-Collins marketing department wanted me to believe?

Certainly, this is as graphic as advertised. It seems, in fact, meticulously designed to shock you on every page. Perhaps this transparently premeditated aim to astonish and alarm is the reason I had such a neutral meh reaction. I saw exactly what Nutting was trying to do, and once the workings of the machinery came clear, it no longer had any effect. I expected to love this book or hate this book (frankly, I was leaning toward hate) when I started. Turns out it was something more disappointing. An average read.

The focus of Tampa undoubtedly grabs your attention. Its subject-matter is both legally and culturally taboo, and it deals with that subject with all the subtlety of someone smacking you across the face with a Nabokov hardbound.

Tampa is told in the first-person, by predatory teacher Celeste. She is Nutting’s most provocative act. A monstrous, mono-focused creature whose sole earthly purpose is to bed fourteen year-old boys. Everything else in her life is an impediment, including her husband Ford, a police officer with family money. Her entire day is spent plotting seductions and fantasizing about adolescents. She apparently doesn’t have any other interests or hobbies. Celeste is driven purely by lust. She is not in love with her conquests. To the contrary, she intends to dispose of them as soon as they grow out of the narrow developmental level she requires to satiate herself.

In short, Celeste is a sociopath. She is glibly superficial, a compulsive liar, imbued with entitlement, always requiring stimulation, and incapable of deep emotional feeling. She is so pathological that she seems to have sprung fully-formed from the pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

I’ve seen Celeste compared to Patrick Bateman, and there is a resemblance. If you like Brett Easton Ellis, maybe this will fit you better than it fit me. I don’t find sociopaths engaging as literary protagonists. It’s not a question of likeability. Instead, it’s a question of care-ability, as in, I can’t invest any emotion in a character that doesn’t have emotion. Celeste is such an empty-souled husk of a human that her fate is almost irrelevant. What do I care if she gets imprisoned or gets away or gets run over by a bus?

Since I brought up likeability, it bears mentioning that she is not likeable. Celeste is hateful and manipulative but not terribly interesting. Obviously, we’re not supposed to like an repentant pedophile. But Celeste is so awful that her adolescent-directed lust is almost the least of her flaws.

No one in this book is a fully-realized person, least of all Celeste. A super-hot teacher who drives a Corvette and only desires sex with nerdy boys? Not to be blunt, but Celeste doesn’t feel like a character drawn by an adult. Instead, she comes across as the masturbatory fantasy of an awkward eighth-grader writing terrible erotica while desperately waiting for an invitation to the junior high mixer that will never come.

The other characters are mostly names without defined existences. This makes a certain amount of sense, since Celeste certainly doesn’t care about anyone else. In Celeste’s world, there is only Celeste and her fiercely raging nether-regions.

Tampa lives and dies on its outrageousness. The ace up Nutting’s sleeve is her willingness to luridly describe the sexual encounters between Celeste and her victim, a fourteen year-old named Jack Patrick. The sex is graphic. Like, really, really graphic. The phrase “forensic in nature” comes immediately to mind. No “fire of my loins” here. This is a novel that eschews euphemisms for the clinical precision of “penis” and “labia.” Even though I read My Secret Life, in which the narrator spends an entire chapter standing beneath an outhouse to be urinated upon, the initial sex scene between Celeste and Jack took me aback. She went there, I thought to myself. She really went there.

The problem for Nutting, though, is that this is a trick that can only be played once. After the first time, there are many more scenes of explicit trysts. Nutting has already gone big, so she has to keep upping the ante, rolling through a heroic litany of lascivious acts. Very quickly – as in, almost instantly – these scenes lose their impact. They become – if this word is appropriate for pedophiliac descriptions – boring.

(The amount of sex she has, in the places where she has it, is increasingly ludicrous. Nutting’s Tampa is a place where no one ever asks a follow up question).

As I read, I often stopped to ponder Nutting’s motive. There is definitely an element of black comedy. The humor does not come from any wit or nuance, but in Celeste’s escalating behaviors. If you can totally suspend your disbelief, some of her crazy and outlandish efforts to keep her affairs secret are mildly amusing.

Tampa is so inwardly focused on Celeste that it’s hard to characterize it as a satire. Unless it is a satire of sex offenders. There are directions this could have gone. There is definitely a point to be made about how differently we treat male verses female offenders. (I find it impossible to believe that Tampa could have been published if the gender roles of the protagonists were switched). There is also the hypocrisy of media coverage (and our complicity in viewing it), which simultaneously scolds and titillates. Nutting makes feints in these directions, but never develops either as a theme. Instead, she doubles down on the hardcore sex, then triples down, and so forth.

This is a book that mistakes detail for substance. We get all the mechanics of teacher-student sex spelled out very clearly. The other stuff, the grooming behaviors of sex offenders, the dark reality of forbidden desire, the uncomfortable notion of love before the age of consent, is entirely absent and unexplored. That might have been transgressive. That might have been interesting.

Tampa does only one thing very well. Unfortunately, that one thing is to expertly describe sex between a teenager and an adult.

[Maxine (Booklover Catlady) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am doing a huge book sort and when I came across this and recalled the impact it had on me I had to read it again, I first read this in 2017. I think it’s even better on a second read.

Wow, wow, wow - this novel tackles taboo stuff, namely the relentless, sociopathic sexual pursuit of teenage boys by a female eighth grade English teacher. It's a book you won't want to like as it's subject matter is just WRONG, but because it's so well written it's a brilliant bit of fiction.

Celeste is married and very attractive with a never ending sexual thirst for teen boys, not teen boys that look like young men but teen boys who still look like, well, young teenage boys.

She plans, executes and pursues her "prey". It's disturbing to be in her mind to say the least, she has zero sense of shame or concern, she is what she is. A sociopath at least, a sexual predator indeed.

I didn't grow to like her and some scenes are just heartbreaking, the impact she has on the lives of others is quite devastating. She is a cold predator, plain and simple. This book challenges the existence of reversed roles, the woman who is the paedophile.

She's clever, too clever and it's hard to read at times but the writing keeps you hooked, because the writing is brilliant.

The sex scenes in the book are explicit and graphic,you need to be prepared for that if you read it, but by golly they are well written scenes regardless. Alissa Nutting has written a controversial book indeed, I honestly couldn't put it down. It's like morbid fascination.

This is a book that divides you all the way through and would make for a brilliant book club discussion. It's like tasting something you want to spit out but as the texture is so nice you persist. That's what this book did to me. It's a very thought-provoking book.

Make it one of your more challenging books to put on your to-read list for sure. I have it at 5 stars because the quality of the writing is outstanding and the book is a stand out. But as for Celeste and her impact on young lives, I don't like it, neither will you, but you will keep reading anyway.

I'll forever be thankful to the librarian that recommended I read this book after he loved it and his wife despised it so he needed my help to settle the score.

Dare you enter the pages of this taboo novel and come out unchanged on the other side. Would love to discuss!

::~~~~~~:::::~~~~~:::::~~~~~:::::~~~~~~::

Thanks so much for reading my review!

I hope you enjoyed it, if you did I’d be delighted if you leave me a “like” and I love to read your comments. If you’d like to connect you can follow me or please send me a friend request.

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If you are an Author or Publisher and you’d like me to consider reading and reviewing your book(s) please just message me.

[Abbie Konnick · Rating 1 out of 5]

ASHAMED that I read this book wow wow wow but I needed to know how it ended…

[Samadrita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am still struggling to understand what this book made me feel or whether it left any impression on me at all.

What I could sense in Nutting's writing, was an eagerness to cause the readers to recoil in horror and to make them experience the full impact of being inside a scheming, conniving, good-looking hebephile like Celeste Price's head.
And I might say, she does succeed in that venture to a certain extent.
But don't mistake this for another Lolita from a female sexual predator's point of view. Alissa Nutting maybe good but her writing doesn't even come close to meriting a comparison with Nabokov's prose. And Celeste Price makes Humbert Humbert look like a fine gentleman deserving of a special award for decency instead of jail time.

She is neither deranged nor merely blessed with an uncommon sexual preference but a calculative, crafty and manipulative 'bitch' (I'm putting aside my obsession with being feministically correct for a while). She has achieved a state of harmony with her aberrations, doesn't suffer from feelings of contrition in any form and relentlessly pursues what she seeks. Not even a highly public trial and an exposure to the world as a sexual deviant of the most abominable type, cures her of her perversions. The narrative also tells us in a rather unsubtle manner, that given an opportunity she would not have hesitated to kill her victims in order to protect her secret.

She is undoubtedly one of the most well-sketched female antagonists in contemporary fiction.
But aside from the creation of this marvellously despicable character I don't spot any other achievement in Nutting's novel.
I was often disturbed by the detailing of various sexual acts between Celeste and Jack/Boyd, the unsuspecting victims, and found a few nagging questions bobbing up to the surface of my consciousness as I kept plowing along - "Um is this erotica masquerading as literary fiction?".

Does Nutting seek to titillate? Does she wish to indict the American judicial system for letting off Celeste easily just because her victims found her sexually attractive enough to want to sleep with her? Does she want to make the world more aware of such perverts lurking just around the corner and hence be more vigilant and keep our children safe? Does she want us to empathize with Celeste Price and see her as a personification of the uglier facets of our existence? Does she question our notions of morality?

I did not get any definitive answers to these questions. I am effectively stumped as to what the purpose of writing this book could have been and hence I am being generous by giving this 3 stars. I was glad when I reached the end and unable to decide whether I just wasted a few precious hours of my spare time or not.

P.S.:- People looking for better books in a similar vein, please do read What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal . I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

*I received an advance reader copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever read a book and wonder what the heck did I just read? This book is that. Celeste Price is a predator. Don't go into this book thinking she is not. The woman sets out to get what she wants (which is a fourteen year old boy) and she adjusts and justifies her actions in split seconds. The damn woman has no soul.
Did that stop me from reading this book? Nope. I'm not rating this book highly because I liked her actions. No one in their right mind could go in this woman's mind and like it. That's what happens in this book though. (You go into the mind of a pedophile.)I rated this book highly because it makes you think. You stop and wonder why???
The author gave me an insight that I do not think I will soon forget.
I would have liked to have known something about her earlier life and what made her become what she did. Heck I don't know if I should just go drink a beer or take a shower to get the feel off me.
Right now I'm doing this......

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Middle school teacher in Florida --Celeste Price --26 year old sociopathic protagonist --married to a police officer likes teenage boys. In particular, one 14-year-old boy.

This story is loosely taken from the true story about Debra Jean Beasley, or better known as Debra Lafave......who pleaded guilty in 2005 to lewd or lascivious battery.
The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14- year old male student in the summer of 2004.

This story will shock and disturb many readers - at the same time the author does an excellent job exploring, examining, and describing how a victim is groomed -- and --things to watch out for so that sexual abuse is not developing.

Told in first person, we take an inside look at the workings of Celeste's mind.
As readers we judge her character...her actions... her thinking...our emotions are swimming in different directions....
We face our own uncomfortableness - or not - reading explicit graphic sexual acts....
seen through the eyes of a predator!

Very Taboo topic...

Excellent writing...not for everyone...yet this book makes you 'think'! And...if you enjoyed it...like I did... it will 'really' make you think! It's all very disgusting ... Repulsive....yet the storytelling was engrossing. How can that be?

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's inconceivable to me just how good this book is. Not just destined to be one of my favorite novels of the year, but quite possibly one of my favorite novels of life. I think Celeste Price would approve of my thinking that I haven't wanted to take a shower after reading several chapters in a sitting, for fear of not having the words on my skin anymore. Fortunately for me, I can always read the book again, after I finish.

As I near the end (sadly), I tweeted to the author this evening:

@cblackstone: @AlissaNutting This book is so good, I'm no longer entirely convinced I'm really reading. It's a dream. I'm dreaming that I discovered the best novel I've read since the point where novels did this sort of thing to me. Thank you.

This book really is a joyous and momentous occasion for prose. I just hope the haters can see the problem, like so many perceived problems, isn't with the novel, its author, or its characters, but with themselves, and their inability, despite seeming to engage in the act, to really read. That inability, and not the art, should be what's "under indictment."

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of weak points in this book, but the novel is captivating for its audacity: Our narrator is a female hebephile with the telling name Celeste Price, a 26-year-old middle school English teacher who rapes teenage boys without remorse. Celeste is an exceptionally beautiful hypersexual manipulative predator, and the way she is written turns her into a cipher: Nutting is not interested in investigating a psychological disorder, she is performing a test with literary and societal tropes related to sex. In the main narrative thread, Celeste grooms and rapes 14-year-old Jack, and all events play into the widespread "sexy teacher" fantasy that often glorifies statutory rape. When she starts a second sexual relationship with a minor who can't consent, things escalate further.

The obvious comparison here is of course Lolita, told by a male hebephile, but while Humbert Humbert tries to manipulate readers with rationalizations and beautiful, enchanting language, Celeste Price, wife of a policeman from a wealthy family, acknowledges the criminal nature of her behavior and fears to be found out, but has no moral inhibitions and openly admits that she wants sexual satisfaction and power: She dreams of forever being remembered as the first sexual partner, an idea commonly connected to the male virginity fetish. The language is plain, drastic, and explicit, without any ambivalence, compassion or moments of moral doubt. Celeste is a sociopath not unlike Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but while Patrick haunts physical perfection and status, Celeste uses physical perfection and her teacher status as tools to solicit sex.

The character of Celeste Price is inspired by a woman the author went to high school with: Debra Lafave, a former English teacher in Tampa and convicted sex offender (weirdly also the ex-girlfriend of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter). The novel follows Lafave's criminal case concerning the main points. There were also rumors that Harmony Korine would turn "Tampa" into a movie, but unfortunately, the project has apparently been dropped.

So all in all, this is a stomach-turning, relentless piece of literature intentionally devoid of lyrical beauty and as such a fascinating experiment in the field of transgressive writing.

[Steve Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd one to rate and review.

Was it well-written? Oh, yeah. Almost... too well-written. Felt a couple times like the plot was a bit too overtly manipulated to steer the story toward a particular conclusion, but maybe I'm just being picky.

Was it entertaining? Hell, yeah. It was hilarious, in the way that sociopaths can be hilarious with their overriding desire to please themselves at the expense of all others (and specifically, Celeste's inner thoughts about those around her.) The voice of this novel felt so real and so alive, it would be hard to believe that this specific person doesn't actually exist out there, somewhere.

Was it arousing in uncomfortable ways. Well, yeah. As a guy, it's difficult not to imagine my own 14-year old self being in that situation, and how amazing it would have been. But then my 14-year old son would walk into the room while I was reading, and that fantasy reading world would come crashing down around me like a controlled demolition. That's when the creepy factor really sets in with this book. Removing yourself from Celeste's fantasy world (which is all-encompassing, as this is written from her first-person perspective) makes the book uncomfortable. Imagining if the gender roles were reversed, makes it creepy as fuck.

Bravo, Alissa Nutting, for creating one of the most memorable characters I've ever read. But this is not a book I plan on revisiting any time soon. Or ever.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely not going to be a book for everyone, and it's bound to be controversial, whatever that means these days. However, I knew I'd want to read it from the first time I heard about it. That may make me sound a bit strange when you consider that the book is about a woman who has an all-consuming sexual obsession for teenage boys... But it got a a good review from Karen, Queen of Goodreads, and it was thanks to her reviews that I discovered and loved The End of Alice, a novel with similarly controversial subject matter which happens to be completely brilliant. The fantastic cover of the UK edition (which I'm kind of surprised they got away with - but then, the cover is nothing compared to the content, I suppose) cemented my certainty that I had to read this.

Celeste Price is a beautiful, wealthy woman in her mid-twenties. Married to handsome Ford, a police officer from a rich family, she appears to have everything in the eyes of the outside world. Indeed, one might be tempted to wonder why she has bothered to train as a schoolteacher when she clearly has no need to work. The answer lies in her proclivity for schoolboys, specifically fourteen-year-olds. Despite living an outwardly and happy normal life, she is wholly devoted to pursuing this obsession, although she mostly appears to live in a dreamworld and gives little thought to her long-term future: she is determined that teaching will provide her with a stream of suitable 'lovers', but appears to devote little energy to actually teaching her students anything whatsoever. This, then, is a portrait of an insatiably sexual and avaricious woman, with the plot hanging on the chain of events that unfolds when Celeste starts to put her plan into action, targeting a virginal student named Jack.

I am not a stranger to fiction with controversial themes - I loved The End of Alice, American Psycho, Lolita, Lamb and Notes of a Scandal (all but one of which, of course, have notable similarities to this in terms of why they're controversial) - but there were times when Tampa tested my resolve. For one thing, there is a lot of sex in this book and it is graphic, almost biological, in its detail. Even if Celeste's partners were adult men, there would be nothing erotic or sexy about these scenes: the word I would use is carnal. Celeste is portrayed not as a victim of her 'condition' but as a ruthless predator, thinking of almost nothing else but her obsession, constantly plotting ways to secure her next target and scoping out her pupils to test their potential. She barely teaches her classes, constantly turning to fantasies and hoping the students will start talking about sex to liven up her day. Although there is one point, near the beginning of the book, when she refers to her sexuality as 'a deformed thing to be kept chained up in the attic', thereafter she pursues her goal almost shamelessly and shows no remorse or emotion. There is also intensely unpleasant content that has nothing to do with underage boys: Celeste is essentially raped at least twice in the book, in scenes that are extremely disturbing to read.

Despite all of the above there is a seam of dark humour running throughout the novel. When Celeste's preferred boy turns fifteen, she wonders whether it would be wise to tactfully introduce him to anti-ageing creams; many of the fantasies she has are ridiculous, in a bizarro sort of way, rather than actually being sexual (aforementioned boy appearing in the form of a giant and crushing her car with his gargantuan penis is just one example). With Celeste drugging herself stupid to endure sex with Ford, stealing away to masturbate furiously over boybands' music videos and fending off the advances of a variety of grotesque adult male characters, this could be seen as a pitch-black satire of the 'perfect' middle-class American marriage.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is an incredibly brave book to have written. Nutting has got so thoroughly inside her protagonist's head that there is nothing the narrative shies away from - it's seriously explicit, and conservative critics of the book are bound to speculate on what this says about the author and why she would have written this story when she could have chosen any other subject. Tampa is an undeniably disturbing piece of work, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone because you're going to need a strong stomach to get through some of it: however, it is also brilliantly written, incisive, strangely funny, dark, shocking and clever. If you enjoyed any of the opinion-dividing books I mentioned above, you must read this one too.

[Tatiana · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is sometimes a very fine line between transgressive lit and plain gross pulp. To me, Tampa crossed into the realm of tasteless and artless masturbatory garbage. Read What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal instead.

[Suz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Possible spoiler

I consider myself to be pretty new at this book reviewing thing. Jot down a few things I liked, disliked, general chit chat about the book. Well with this one I just don't know. I'm not an expert about what people should and should not write about, what would I know?! But I do know this is some crazy stuff, yes it does happen, but writing fiction such as this on this topic? 30 year old female, sexually attracted to 14 year old boys? Every sentence was about the topic. The desire, lust and obsession 'Celeste' had. She was a teacher and had sex with her students. Some reviews alluded to the comedic aspect, I don't know how it was funny.. Funny that she was so obsessed, funny that she was unrelenting and could describe with clarity the depravity of her thought process from inception to physically carrying out this stuff? Anyway, I'm just lost. I'm not saying I couldn't stand to read it or am jumping up and down about the subject matter. I just don't know how the author could decide on the subject matter and run with it. She wrote very well though.

"In moments of clarity, I was willing to admit to myself that I shouldn't have taken another boy to his father's house. But Jack also could've saved us all a great deal of agony if he'd simply had the consideration to call before dropping by". I guess that was a funny sad statement. In the end Celeste kept doing what she was doing though. Maybe that's the moral of the story??

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

Celeste Price has everything a girl could dream of. She’s model-gorgeous with an equally attractive husband who also happens to have a significant trust fund. He works as a police officer, she is a middle-school teacher. He worships the ground his trophy wife walks on and she????? Well, she fantasizes about banging 8th graders.

Okay kids, get ready to hate me because I freakin’ LOVED Tampa. Please, don’t misunderstand – I agree that the subject matter is 100% cringe-inducing. Hell, I remember expressing my amore for this beautiful little werewolf:



Only to have my son remind me that he played this character not too far back:



I spent the next several years watching the various Twilight films and contemplating whether I should register myself on the national sex offender list for my impure thoughts.

With Tampa, however, Alissa Nutting keeps her tongue so firmly planted in her cheek throughout the book it somehow makes it possible to put your mind past the pedophilia. I found Tampa to be deliciously dark. Reminiscent of American Beauty and Lolita – the tale of ultimate taboo finds a balancing counterpart with a vicious wit. Absolutely NOT for the faint of heart, but if you dare to venture out of your comfort zone you will discover one of the most well written books of the year.

Here’s to a follow-up story in 25 years giving us an update on Frank Rossitano and Lynn Onkman .... errrr, I mean Jack Patrick and Celeste Price.

[Jenn(ifer) · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a shit show!

There are very few books out there that I actually capital h hate. To be precise, I can think of six. American Psycho (what a snooze-fest; I don't give a shit about what he's wearing or eating or whatever the fuck else Ellis went on and on about), The Silver Linings Playbook (seriously, I want to know who the author slept with to get this thing published), Bad Marie, New Moon, My French Whore and this here.

Let me just say first that I have absolutely no problem with gratuitous sex. I have no problem with the idea of a female pedophile who has lots and lots of gratuitous sex with teenage boys. But I have a big big problem with writing that straight up sucks.

However, here's a confession: her writing turned me on a little. *Shudder* I'm a disgusting human being. BUT! my own conflicted feelings about being aroused by descriptions of sex with a neonate are not why I hated this book. This is not a guilty one-star rating. The story (there actually was a bit of story interspersed with the sexy-time) just seemed so contrived. And when she wasn't having lewd rendezvous with 14 year old boys, I was bored. That is unacceptable. Boring, to me, is the kiss of death.

I had high hopes for Alissa Nutting's first novel. Instead, what I got was amateurish, banal masturbatory fodder.

(Not that there's anything wrong with masturbatory fodder - I just like my intellect to be tittilated too!)

[Emmyreads444 · Rating 4 out of 5]

buckle in bitches because this was a wild fucking book. *CHECK TW BEFORE READING*

I think the concept of the book was amazing. I just read my dark Vanessa & it was interesting to see the rolls switched where it was a young female teacher grooming her 8th grade students.

Celeste is sick as FUCK. Throw her in prison immediately. I’m so pissed with the ending.

I will have nightmares for the next week because of this book so read with caution. It tackles the same topics that my dark Vanessa covered but it was 10x worse and way more graphic