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Book Information
Tampa
Written by Alissa Nutting
Narrated by Kathleen McInerney
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Start ListeningEditor's Note
A controversial debut…
The “Lolita” of our time, “Tampa” debuted to a thousand criticisms and controversies. But the erotic tale’s brilliance is in artfully exposing the manicured facades of monsters.
Description
Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She's undeniably attractive. She drives a red Corvette with tinted windows. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed, and devoted to her.
But Celeste's devotion lies elsewhere. She has a singular sexual obsession—fourteen-year-old boys. Celeste pursues her craving with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought; her sole purpose in becoming a teacher is to fulfill her passion and provide her access to her compulsion. As the novel opens, fall semester at Jefferson Jr. High is beginning.
In mere weeks, Celeste has chosen and lured the lusciously naive Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his teacher, and, most important, willing to accept Celeste's terms for a secret relationship—car rides after school; rendezvous at Jack's house while his single father works late; body-slamming encounters in Celeste's empty classroom between periods.
Ever mindful of the danger—the perpetual risk of exposure, Jack's father's own attraction to her, and the ticking clock as Jack leaves innocent boyhood behind—the hyperbolically insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination, even when the solutions involve greater misdeeds than the affair itself. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress driven by pure motivation. She deceives everyone, and cares nothing for anyone or anything but her own pleasure.
With crackling, rampantly unadulterated prose, Tampa is a grand, uncompromising, seriocomic examination of want and a scorching literary debut.
Book Actions
Start ListeningBook Information
Tampa
Written by Alissa Nutting
Narrated by Kathleen McInerney
Editor's Note
A controversial debut…
The “Lolita” of our time, “Tampa” debuted to a thousand criticisms and controversies. But the erotic tale’s brilliance is in artfully exposing the manicured facades of monsters.
Description
Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She's undeniably attractive. She drives a red Corvette with tinted windows. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed, and devoted to her.
But Celeste's devotion lies elsewhere. She has a singular sexual obsession—fourteen-year-old boys. Celeste pursues her craving with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought; her sole purpose in becoming a teacher is to fulfill her passion and provide her access to her compulsion. As the novel opens, fall semester at Jefferson Jr. High is beginning.
In mere weeks, Celeste has chosen and lured the lusciously naive Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his teacher, and, most important, willing to accept Celeste's terms for a secret relationship—car rides after school; rendezvous at Jack's house while his single father works late; body-slamming encounters in Celeste's empty classroom between periods.
Ever mindful of the danger—the perpetual risk of exposure, Jack's father's own attraction to her, and the ticking clock as Jack leaves innocent boyhood behind—the hyperbolically insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination, even when the solutions involve greater misdeeds than the affair itself. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress driven by pure motivation. She deceives everyone, and cares nothing for anyone or anything but her own pleasure.
With crackling, rampantly unadulterated prose, Tampa is a grand, uncompromising, seriocomic examination of want and a scorching literary debut.
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Reviews
So, once you get that this is a clever commentary on society's discomfort with female sexuality ramped up to the Lolitas with lashings of underage rumpy-pumpy, you've pretty much understood the whole thing.
I liked it. Nutting is no Nabokov but so few writers are that it barely matters. I wouldn't want all my narrators to be this disturbing and amoral, but I'm willing to put up with the odd one or two.
Rating: 4I liked it. Nutting is no Nabokov but so few writers are that it barely matters. I wouldn't want all my narrators to be this disturbing and amoral, but I'm willing to put up with the odd one or two.
Tampa by Alissa Nutting is not a book for everyone. In fact, it might not be a book that you even want to read. It’s rated 3.33 on Goodreads.But I’m giving this weirdly uncomfortable book 4 stars. Why? Because only great writers make you feel REALLY uncomfortable with the topic you are reading about.Let me explain. . .Celeste is a (fictional) teacher in Tampa, Florida. She’s 26, gorgeous, married to a wealthy handsome man, and is so excited to start teaching English!Why is she so excited? She wants to sleep with a fourteen-year-old male student and . . . For the full review, visit Love at First Book
Rating: 4This is a hard one to rate. It was intriguing to read and root so much against an awful character.
Also to examine society's views on something like this when it happens.
The character is sick but Nutting brings something incredibly gross to life with some great writing.
Ending is meh.
Rating: 3Also to examine society's views on something like this when it happens.
The character is sick but Nutting brings something incredibly gross to life with some great writing.
Ending is meh.
Rarely do I encounter a novel as unique—or as perversely taboo—as this one. Celeste Price, the narrator and protagonist of Tampa, is a beautiful, blonde, 20something eight grade English teacher who is married to an attractive, wealthy police officer. She is also a voracious pedophile who lusts after the 14-year-old boys she teaches. It might be logical to presume that Celeste, in telling her tale, would rationalize her desires, obfuscate, make excuses, or otherwise try to justify her thoughts, feelings, and actions. That is not, however, the case. Despite all of her reprehensible flaws and immorality, Celeste is brutally, icily honest about her lust for pubescent males. She knows she’s awful, and she offers no apologies for her deviant appetites. She is, in fact, quite aware of her libido and the potential consequences—she chooses her targets with great precision and plans her seductions meticulously. She also engages in wild fits of paranoia. And she has a biting, bitter sense of humor that almost—but not quite—makes her just the least bit sympathetic. But the most flattering thing to be said of her character is that she is not an unreliable narrator. While she is quite focused on deceiving her husband, her colleagues, and her administrators about her secret desires, she is utterly frank with the reader.And that stark honesty is just as responsible as her pedophile libido for creating the unease evoked by reading this novel. Not only does the explicit taboo of the narrative create a virtually pornographic guilt within the reader, but Celeste lures us into her confidence, thus implicating us in her immorality as well. We alone are privy to her depravity. Needless to say, this is quite an uncomfortable read. Ultimately, Nutting’s skill as a writer (especially as the creator of such a compelling antihero) triumphs over the novel’s sometimes incredulous plot—a few unanticipated consequences conveniently propel the narrative, and the resolution is not entirely plausible. But Nutting’s style is intriguing enough to spark interest in her future efforts.
Rating: 4Let's be honest, this is a creepy book. The main character is a beautiful young teacher whose all-encompassing purpose in life is to seduce fourteen-year-old boys. She thinks about sex constantly and disturbingly. But here's the impressive part: for all her single-mindedness, her inner monologue is never boring. She's less abstract about her pursuit of pleasure than Humbert Humbert, but this book shares something important with Lolita: it is surprisingly hard to tear your eyes away from the page, despite the discomfort of the subject matter.
Rating: 4The controversy around this title is deserved, I believe: its content is deeply unsettling. However, ultimately I found its descent into caricature to be disappointing - after raising issues it failed to offer any real catharsis or shift in its main character. Yes, it's black satire, but it ended up lacking emotional truth within the satire more than I would have liked.
Rating: 3Alissa Nutting's Tampa will draw obvious comparisons to Nabokov's Lolita solely because of their similar subject matter, but Tampa is a very different novel. Lolita is marked by high modernist language; lush, playful, and tricky. This is a novel marked by the cool sparsity of our contemporary postmodernism. Celeste Price is a sociopath, a calculating personality that aims to manipulate everyone around her to her greatest benefit. The psychological depth of her character is formed by Nutting's tight prose, and it is a highlight of the novel. The most disturbing thing about the novel though is how deeply it is entrenched in superficial American materialism. Celeste's beauty and status blind everyone to her damaging obsessions and her cruel manipulations. Until they do not, but what that requires is shocking. This novel was surprisingly well crafted and handled a touchy subject matter with precision. Part suspense and part cultural satire that gives an unnerving portrait of a sexual predator. I want to read Nutting's first book, a collection of short stories, and see what other themes she explores.
Rating: 4"... thirty-one is roughly seventeen years past my window of sexual interest." (p.1). Thus, Celeste describes her husband, and thus, right from the start she makes clear what she wants. Celeste is a female, predatory pedophile.Sadly, repeated sex scandals over the past three decades have numbed readers, and although sexual assault on children by pedophiles still evokes horror, Tampa, by Alissa Nutting is much more a parody than a shocking novel.The inversion, of making the pedophile in Tampa a female character highlights the groteskness of the idea. Pedophilia is grotesk of itself, and Alissa Nutting uses hyperbole to magnify the problem: the disproportionate, excessive weirdness of Celeste Price is almost humoristic.Celeste Price is married to the over-averagely handsome Ford. Aged 26, she works as a high school teacher. She is smart, direct and predatory. The novel is written from her perspective, so the reader follows her ridiculous reasoning in line. Celeste's mind is like a parallel universe. Her predatory, rational acting comes natural to her. Her sexual drive toward young adolescents is complete and hard-core. The novel shuns no taboos. Celeste strives for complete sexual relationships including penetration.Tampa makes the most of its theme, driving Celeste to ever more precarious escapades. Nothing is crazy enough. If she cannot have a boy, she masturbates. She focuses on pupils in her own classes, whom she first approaches after class. If successful, she tries to develop complete sexual relationships with the boys in their homes. Caught, almost in flagrante with Jack's father, she seamlessly proceeds to seduce the father, merely to cover up what has been going on with the son. When Jack's father dies of a heart attack, she takes it in her stride. When boys pass on, or become "too old" she swoops down onto other boys.Most if not all pedosexual scandals in the real world involve men predating on either young boys or girls. A female sexual predator and sociopath such as Celeste Price in Tampa, do they exist? The psyche of Celeste is a clever construct, whether 'realistic' or not. Nutting does a better job with Celeste's young victims. The psychology of the boys in the novel is quite convincing. Not entirely plausible, though, Tampa has the bravoura of the novels of John Irving, while Celeste has the obsessed mindset of a female American Psycho.Like the novels of John Irving, ridiculous and balancing on the edge of credibility, Tampa by Alissa Nutting is very well written. However, as the novel is very explicit about sexuality, it is clearly not for everyone. Besides, its taboo theme, however close it may come to parody, is probably not acceptable to all readers.
Rating: 4This novel left me feeling icky. And seeing as how it's about a 26-year-old 8th grade teacher who seduces 14 year old boys, it did its job. Celeste Price is a gorgeous woman with a disturbing sexual appetite, one that only underage boys can satisfy. She is repulsed by her husband Ford, and often drugs herself (or him) when intimate encounters with him inevitably occur. She talks constantly about how disgusting other people (particularly adult women) are, and is self-centered in the most horrible way. Her main, and only, goal is to find a perfect specimen of a boy; in fact, she got her teaching credential just so she can constantly be around them. When she finally selects Jack Patrick as her target, she does everything in her power to keep him (but only for a year or so - after that, they start getting too mature). Nutting based her story on Debra Lafave, a young teacher who was accused of sleeping with her underage students, and a high school classmate of Nutting. During the trial, the jury was told that she was "too beautiful for prison", a sentiment echoed near the end of the book when Celeste inevitably gets found out. Nutting combines erotica and social satire/criticism in an interesting way. Celeste is absolutely unrepentant in her monstrosity, and her calculating and borderline sociopathic behavior sheds a light on female predators. While the writing was good enough, there was still something about the book that didn't connect for me. I can't quite put my finger on it.Obviously, this book depicts events and acts that are not for the squeamish. It's not fun or easy to read about child sexual abuse, but in the hands of Nutting, the topic could be an eye-opener into how the world sees female sexual predators and their victims.
Rating: 3Oh ick.So I kinda knew a tiny bit of what I was getting into with this book - but no, not really.I understood in broad strokes what the subject matter would be. I should have know by looking at the atrocious cover that it was going to revel in explicitness.I think I understand what Nutting is trying to do with this book. There is a lot of shock value here that helps illuminate hypocrisy in society and double standards - it also presents a case for a sociopath like we (I) have never seen before. All that being said and taking in and appreciating her points, I just think (and completely concede that my age and ever growing fuddy-duddiness might be a factor) that this kind of provocative writing makes having any kind of intellectual conversation following reading it challenging.I am amazed that this book is being so widely read and promoted. She certainly did a great job of choosing a subject that has piqued this interest of many, In the end - I wish I had spent my time reading something else.
Rating: 2Wow.So, after reading this book, I completely understand why it provoked such strong reactions from people when it was released. I mean, who really WANTS to read a book about a sexual predator using her status as a teacher to seduce young men into destructive relationships? But, I have to admit, I couldn't put it down. I literally read this book in less than a day. It sucked me in like a train wreck you can't look away from and didn't let up until the unbelievable (unless you watch the news) ending.I'm sure by now everyone knows that this book is filled with graphic descriptions of sex and it pulls no punches. You WILL want to take a shower after reading it - it's that gross. Even more disturbing than the graphic nature of the book was the honest, almost sociopathic way in which Celeste, the protagonist, goes about explaining what drives her.The book opens as Celeste, a 24-year-old 8th-grade teacher in Tampa, is preparing for the first day of school. Over the next several weeks she'll peruse the available students in her classes and settle on Jack, a quiet 14-year old in her English class. She then seduces him and embarks on a sexual relationship with him, dodging her police officer husband, his absent divorced father, and a handful of potentially nosy neighbors and coworkers.There is no pretense of feelings on her part, though Jack romanticizes the relationship - for Celeste, it is entirely about sex. Her non-stop fixation on sex borders on the pornographic. (This is not a book you will be inclined to loan out to people or recommend to friends.) Claire is a sociopath. She doesn't attempt to rationalize or pretend that her desires are something they aren't, nor does she attempt to elicit sympathy from the reader by blaming her predilections on past trauma, they just are what they are. She wants to dominate every situation, emotionally manipulating everyone in her life to cave to her needs, and she is matter of fact about it, from start to finish. Strikingly, Celeste speaks of no friends with whom she has an honest relationship. Every single one of the few relationships she has is based on a lie. She shows no contrition for her deviancy, nor does she make any attempt to control it.Through straightforward, graphic prose and a well-developed female antagonist that will remind you of Gone Girl, Nutting has given us an American Psycho-esque look into the mind of a predator. While I'm not sure I liked it, I'm glad I read it.
Rating: 3Tampa Steve Lowe's perfect review says it all
"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."
Rating: 4"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."
Tampa is a disgusting and vile book, which is actually a good thing when it's subject matter is middle school teacher preying on young boys to groom for her sexual desires. The author does not hold back on disgusting fantasies and thoughts running through Celeste Price mind. I think the author really did a good job on having the main character know she likes something she shouldn't and is a pervert, but doesn't really care. The book kind of falls apart halfway through. Price pretending to be interested in Buck, her student's father, in order to get more time and an excuse if she is caught there, not terribly unrealistic but pushing it. Then it goes to Price bringing another student to her ex-student's house, that does not make sense at all especially when she planned and was careful so much before. The trial part kind of redeems the book. Price pretty much gets a slap on the wrist for what she has done. Let's face it, society doesn't see women who have sex with underage boys as awful as they see men who do the same thing with young girls. It's not right, but it is how it is sadly, so the outcome of her trial made sense and what she did after it does too.
Rating: 3It's so hard to judge this book. It has to easily be one of the most controversial books I have ever read. The story is about Celeste Price, think Debra LaFave or Pamela Smart. She is a beautiful, young teacher married to the perfect man. She has everything going for her and is beloved by everyone, because they cannot see the diseased, mentally ill person she is on the inside. Her entire focus from the time she gets up until she goes to sleep is how she can have sex with prepubescent boys in her English class. And has sex she does, in excruciatingly detailed encounters that make you feel like you are reading child pornography. I have taught middle school boys and what was described here was truly sickening to me. I kept trying to find some motivation for Celeste's actions but it boils down to the fact that she is a psychopath clean and simple. No regard whatsoever to anyone else's feelings. Everyone who comes in contact with her has their life destroyed. Reading about how she wrecks havoc on everyone around her was the fascinating part, kind of like viewing a car accident on the highway. I just couldn't look away. It kept my attention until the end but I felt icky after. At my local library this is displayed on a table with the newly arrived teen books. Someone made a mistake.
Rating: 4As expected, the book was dirty and explicit in many places and in many ways. But I did enjoy the amazing writing. I think most of the books that have been put out there that have involved being in a perverted mind has never really did it that well. This writer was able to pull it off though. I enjoyed the book but can only recommend it if you will not have a problem with some dirty, dirty going on.
Rating: 4Nauseating and fascinating at the same time. This account of is easily the most disturbing book I've ever read. I had previously read Alissa Nutting's collection of short stories, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, and found them absurd and funny, sometimes gross but very sharp. I can see how the same mind created this book, taking some of the seedy, macabre elements to an extreme. Celeste's meticulous, single-minded pursual of her young target borders on psychopathic, and her detached language is reminiscent of the similarly monstrous American Psycho. This book filled me with a sense of dread, but I couldn't stop turning the pages.
Rating: 4The backstory: Tampa was longlisted for the 2013 Flaherty-Dunnan Prize, an award sponsored by the Center for Fiction for the best debut novel of the year.The basics: Twenty-six year-old Celeste Price is eager to start her new job teaching middle school in suburban Tampa. Her reason: access to fourteen-year-old boys, the only people to whom she is sexually attracted.My thoughts: As I was raving about this novel to my husband shortly after I finished it, he (somewhat jokingly) said that I really enjoy novels about sexual deviance. Stumped, I asked him for other examples, and he promptly replied Room (which he was too disturbed by to finish and I call one of my all-time favorite reads.) Later, I realized I also adored Repeat It Today with Tears (my review), which is about a father-daughter love affair. It's true all of these novels share the theme of sexual deviance, but they're also about so much more than that, which is why I truly love them.I read fiction for many reasons, but one of them is to better understand other people. When news breaks of a teacher having an affair with a young student, the question of how or why a person could do that is often asked. While the question may be meant rhetorically, I love that Nutting embraces the character of the Celeste in an attempt to provide a more complicated answer to the question. Nutting does not hold back. Celeste is a brutally honest narrator, and while some parts of this novel were challenging to read, the novel is better because of them. There are moments when Celeste's relationship with Jack seem almost normal. I loved these moments precisely because they soon seem so very wrong. It's a testament to Nutting's writing, character development, and world building that there could be moments of eroticism in such a taboo relationship. Because Celeste is the reader's window into this world, it's easy to be swept away with how she sees the events, but it's still difficult to imagine a happy ending to this novel as Celeste's actions become more reckless. Celeste's collision course with repurcussions is made all the more fascinating by the depth of its set-up, and the final pages of her story are the truly perfect ending. The verdict: Tampa is a novel that reminds me why I will always love fiction best. Alissa Nutting masterfully gets inside the mind and body of Celeste. The result is a modern masterpiece whose story can only be told this deeply in a fictional way, and its haunting final pages will stick with me for a very long time.
Rating: 5After reading Lolita earlier this year, I was excited to read a story with the genders reversed. Well, Nutting is no Nabokov and Celeste Price is no Humbert Humbert. Do not even approach this novel with expectations that they will be similar because they are nothing alike. You will be severely disappointed.Celeste is depicted as a total psychopath--a predatory woman who has no natural affection for anyone or remorse for hurting anyone. She is consumed with her sexual desires and they are all that matters. Okay, I get that. I can buy that these urges torment this woman and rule her life, but making Celeste so unrepentant and predatory seems extreme. Not only do I find it hard to believe that someone would feel no shame for such actions or be so aggressive in them, but it distances the reader--especially when Celeste delves into her obscene and ridiculous fantasies. Much of the book felt hyperbolic. There was no elegance, no subtlety, no undertones that sent shivers through my body--everything was in your face and felt melodramatic. Some of this may stem from a naivety that I just can't believe someone would be this selfish or disgusting, but even Humbert Humbert was charming in his own twisted way. It seems as though Nutting was more interested in creating a monster than creating a real character.Beyond that, the writing was difficult to swallow. I don't mind the graphic bits. I'm not referring to that at all. But the writing style was often ridiculous. Celeste seems to speak with language and syntax that suggests she is educated, but the language is overwrought and is flimsy in terms of intelligence. It seems as though we are supposed to be impressed with how she uses language but there is clearly no reason to be. In fact, it's the opposite. This may be a part of Nutting's plan--to further develop Celeste into this over-the-top creature feature--but I think it was the wrong route. Not only did it make me want to set the book down on several occasions, but it was completely unnecessary--especially if it was being used simply as a tool to "establish" Celeste's "character." There are better ways to develop characters.The good I got from this book is the challenge to assumed morality that it poses. Are there people out there like Celeste Price--monsters in the truest sense of the word? If there are, what should be done with them? Can we trust someone who has committed such crimes to not do them again? In Celeste's case, we know we can't. How do we decide who to let start a new life when they all might be plotting the next time they can give into their disgusting, harmful, predatory urges? I wish these themes would have been played with more instead of the circus ride Nutting took us on.
Rating: 1I wanted to rate this book higher. It is extremely well written but the difficulty of the subject matter prevented me from doing so. Still, when one considers the subject matter, it was amazing how the author could help you relate to especially the main character. The amount of detail and thought put into how the character felt, why she did the things she did, could almost allow you to live in her shoes for a brief time. I would recommend selectively to friends who are capable of handling the difficult topic and the vulgar nature of the beginning part of the book.
Rating: 2This book is not for the faint of heart. The story is about a sexy twenty six year old female teacher who I would characterize as a sex addict who has a penchant for 14 year old boys. At the beginning of the school year she scouts out the prospects and when she decides she goes into stalking mode. Things are somewhat complicated by the fact she is married to a handsome policeman Her scheming does unravel somewhat at the end but not totally. There is a great amount of graphic sexuality in the book some of it of a "non traditional" nature. So was the book written simply to stimulate or is there a greater question involved here. This book did make me think. If the principle character had been a 52 year old man would I have looked on him differently. Is there a big double standard in our country over this issue - The teenage boys generally would be open to an encounter like this from the start anyway. Right? So if you have a stern make up I recommend that you read this book.
Rating: 4Advanced edition kindly provided by Netgalley.This was an unbelieveably good read. I could not put it down. Incredibly graphic and disturbing, the writing was nonetheless fantastic. For a psychogical fiction fan like myself, what a compelling tale Nutting tells. The author has obviously extensively researched the obsessive tendancies of the pedophile. If you can manage to get past the explicit sexuality, the novel provides great insight into the various personality traits and compulsions of a modern-day psychopath. Sure to be a bestseller. Highly recommended.Four and a half out of five stars
Rating: 5If you have heard of this book, then you already know it is not for everyone. It is the story of a 26 year old female school teacher who purposely teaches middle school so she has a large group of 14 year old boys upon which to prey. She is a sexual sociopath with no qualms about doing whatever it takes to satisfy her sexual urges. While I felt the author conveyed the predator aspect of the character to a tee, I did have some troubles with the first few chapters. Not the sexual content in and of itself, but the utter obsession that it showed. I had a hard time understanding how she could be so fully consumed with sexual desire and yet somehow have the wherewithall to carefully plot her next victim. Typically that level of preoccupation would seem to cause an irresistible desire that would need to be quenched prior to being able to logically plan a "hunt" for a suitable target. Beyond that, however, we see a cold, calculating predator that will not be stopped. Tampa is a disturbing novel, but in the end it sticks with the reader. It leaves open so many avenues for discussion. It brings up the way we as a society treat female sexual predators different from males. There are no answers here... no happy endings.. just uncomfortable, disconcerting experiences.
Rating: 3This book is...different. Nutting succeeded in delving into the hideously grotesque minds of female sex offenders. I noted that at least a 3rd of the scenes felt unnecessary (perhaps thrown in for extra shock factor) which seemed to sidetrack the story from the character study, and drew more attention to the lewd and off-putting sexual acts committed. That said, the focus on erotic encounters highlighted just how much the sex offender needed therapy (to say the least!). To summarise my thoughts: too much sex and not enough character development, but a brave and applaudable attempt by Nutting to broach the taboo and sensitive topic that is female pedophilia, whilst, more importantly, raising the differences in which female pedophiles are treated differently to their male counterparts in not only media, but the eyes of society and the law.
Rating: 4Okay, the topic of this book is super controversial, and the main character is a horrible, horrible person. That being said, I did not want to put this book down. I can't even say that I really disliked Celeste. I didn't like her either, but I wanted to know what was going to happen. Celeste teaches middle schools and sexually preys on a couple of her students. She is completely aware that it's wrong, but it's the only thing that really turns her on. Will it all end in tears or will she get away with it?When I first picked this up, I was a little grossed out with myself that I would read this. I think what bothered me was that the predator was female. I have read plenty of books in this vein that have a male "protaganist": Belinda by Anne Rice and Lolita by Nabakov to name a couple. Those are socially acceptable pieces of literature, this should be too. It's a good read.
Rating: 5The easiest thing to say about Alissa Nutting's "Tampa" is that it's a gender-swapped "Lolita". But I've read "Lolita," and Alissa Nutting's "Tampa" is no "Lolita." The real genius of Nabokov novel was that he wrote novel about a pedophile having an affair with a fourteen-year-old girl and came close to convincing you that he'd really written a novel about everything but that. Humbert Humbert is a pervert, yes, but he's also a man obsessed with evanescent beauty, a aesthete who's been tempted by beauty and simply given in. An old-fashioned Cold War-era European snob, he sometimes Dolores Haze to access the fun, empty, disposable commercial culture he both loathes and secretly craves, and sometimes I think that this aspect of Nabokov's book is played down too much. But that's precisely what's wrong with "Tampa." All we get here is Celeste's explicitly consumeristic greed: for luxury items, beauty products, nice cars, and expensive meals. Her lust for young boys might just just be another item on her shopping list. It might, I suppose, be satire, but "Tampa" is played so straight-faced that I'm not sure that it is: Celeste's take on American consumerism is, to put it mildly, less conflicted than Humbert Humbert, and the author's intent here seems to be to shock and nothing else. To say that Celeste isn't as deep a character as Humbert Humbert is and that Nutting isn't one-quarter the writer that Nutting is is to understate the case. "Lolita" was a beautiful thing in its own right: the sort of thing that its main character would have loved: by contrast, "Tampa" seems to be written with a sledgehammer. There's little here but Celeste's monomaniacal desire. She's very likely some sort of sociopath, but, as other reviewers have noted, sociopaths are, like most egotists, sort of boring. The author does a good job of what Celeste gets from pubescent boys that she doesn't get from grown men, which is commendable in itself, but she herself seems to be something of a blank slate: we hear almost nothing about her life before she became a wife and a teacher, and little enough about the parts of her life that don't involve seducing teenagers. There's nothing here but plot, and when your protagonist's an enormous, unlikable egoist, that's just not enough. Even after having made these criticisms, the one thing that I think that the author gets right is the sex, and, since there's little else here, that's a big point in the book's favor. Celeste isn't really much of a moral actor, and the author mostly withholds judgment, but she does manage to communicate the physical and emotional aspects of teenage boys that Celeste finds attractive in unblinking detail, which is difficult to do, as teenage boys can often be awkward, liminal creatures. This is a book where the unformed psychology and physiology of teenage boys is precious and full-grown masculinity seen as stomach-churningly repellent, which neatly turns most grown women's perspectives upside-down. The sex scenes in "Tampa" are explicit and furious, sometimes without being terribly erotic. But then there's the moments when Nutting ably captures her male character's vulnerability, or their fragile, half-grown bodies, or when Celeste considers that every time she tries something new with one of her lovers, it's one last thing she'll get to try with them for the first time. Humbert Humbert, of course, would never have put things so crudely. But this may be the one thing that these two characters have in common: the love -- or at least desire for -- for something fleeting and necessarily impermanent. But that doesn't make Nutting's novel a good one. Shocking, explicit, honest, but ultimately shallow. Recommended to those who enjoy literary oddities for their own sake, but to no-one else.
Rating: 2OK. First things first. This is not a book to buy grandma for Christmas. If this was a Channel 4 TV programme it would be preceded with a voiceover saying "warning - the following programme contains adult themes of a strong sexual nature and of explicit nudity". If you own this book and have teenage boys in the house I would find a sturdy safe to lock it away in.There is a lot of sex in the novel, and I mean a lot. Like on practically every page for the first third of the book especially, and this was before the main character had even got her hooks into one of the students. This, coupled with the front cover which my husband told me assuredly was a picture of a vagina (to which I retorted that it was merely an innocent buttonhole and to keep his dirty thoughts to himself) meant that I found this book rather embarrassing to read on my public transport work commute. The more I opened up the book to hide the cover, the more I displayed paragraphs of copious shagging to whoever might happen to be glancing over my shoulder. It felt like there was a flashing arrow over my head with the words "depraved middle-aged woman reading dirty book alert" emblazoned on it.It's a book that means to shock, mostly as the sex offender in question is a hot young woman and not some lecherous old man (not sure why Harvey Weinstein sprang to mind there). Celeste is a married teacher whose libido is off the scale, and unfortunately it is young 14 year old boy students who push her buttons, so to speak. For the first third of the book I thought it was very OTT on the graphic sexual content, and the protagonist preying on young teenagers was a very unsettling context. However, unlike 50 Shades of Grey which is all sex and no writing talent, Nutting is a good writer, and once the storyline properly gets going it becomes a gripping and witty read. The reader never becomes sympathetic to Celeste and her deviant ways, but her extreme sexual predator nature makes for some very funny scenes. There's also a great minor character - a fellow teacher - who's akin to Melissa McCarthy's Megan character from the film Bridesmaids, and she adds a lot of humour.It's an unsettling book, and Nutting purposely does that to you as a reader. You're happily reading away one minute and then feel decidedly uncomfortable the next for enjoying a book that has a sexual deviant who preys on young people at its core. She also pushes some interesting questions within the book. If the sexes were reversed we'd be in no doubt that the (male) teacher was a disgusting paedophile, but when it's a hot young female teacher and pubescent sex-obsessed boys who are willing accomplices does it still feel like clear cut abuse?This is most certainly not a book for everyone, and on that basis I would not recommend that you all rush out to your local bookshop to pick up a copy. Having said that, it's a good read.4 stars - shocking yet funny and unlike anything you'll have read before. Now to pick up something suitably straight-laced to redeem my reputation on the bus...
Rating: 4Let me just start out by saying that Alissa Nutting doesn't care if you're uncomfortable. There's not a page of this novel that doesn't make somebody unhappy. Celeste Price is a twenty-six year old middle school English teacher. She's also a pedophile, relentlessly fantasizing about boys and then using her position to prey on them. Like Humbert Humbert, she's full of rationalizations about her behavior; unlike him, she's devoid of the cultural wrappings that served to make what he did palatable. She's perfectly aware of the potentially devastating consequences to herself if she is unmasked and utterly unconcerned about the effects on the boys she manipulates. Tampa is told from Celeste's point of view. It's an unpleasant place to be. She's a consummate manipulator of everyone from her victims to her husband to her co-workers. She knows how to use her youth and beauty to distract people. She's also deeply insecure as her ability to lure victims is entirely based on her youth and beauty. Nutting is doing some interesting work here. She's written a compelling, compulsively readable novel about something terrible. She makes the reader look at what Celeste is doing and the excuses she makes, even as she confronts the reader with how differently we would regard the same narrative from a middle-aged man.
Rating: 4Twenty six year old Celeste Price is the perfect apex predator. Beautiful, well off and manipulative , she stalks her prey with a single minded ruthlessness. Her prey are fourteen year old boys. Despite being married to a handsome police officer who was born into a wealthy family, Celeste pursues her obsession with a single minded intensity that cannot be diverted. She lands her dream job as a middle school teacher and promptly begins an affair with one of her less physically developed students. Over the course of the school year she becomes ever more involved, knowing that soon her prize will age out and she will need to find a new subject. The beauty of her new position she feels is that there will be an endless supply of candidates, year after year. But even the most carefully laid plans and the most manipulated of young lovers can come unglued. Far sooner then she would have expected, Mrs. Price's double life becomes totally unraveled, the shock of a community and the devastation of a young boy.
Rating: 3Well-written and very hard to put down - but . . . very unpleasant and not very believable story about a woman pedophile. Truly I thought she had imagined a male pedophile and then changed the main character to a female. Not really sure about the need for a book like this. It did remind me of Notes on a Scandal, of course, but this was written in a much more titallating manner.
Rating: 3I think this is Nutting's first book, and for a first book, she knocked it out of the park.
This book is about a middle school teacher called Celeste who is obsessed with underaged boys. I read this a few years ago - and I read it in a few days.
I will say, this book is really well-written, but it contains a lot of sex, masturbation and everything in between.
This book has a really strong narrative voice - I started reading this book because I like reading about female characters who aren't inherently 'good'.
And Celeste is a terrible, terrible person.
I really liked this book - I don't think it's for everyone, but I love how unapologetic Nutting is in her writing of this novel.
Rating: 4This book is about a middle school teacher called Celeste who is obsessed with underaged boys. I read this a few years ago - and I read it in a few days.
I will say, this book is really well-written, but it contains a lot of sex, masturbation and everything in between.
This book has a really strong narrative voice - I started reading this book because I like reading about female characters who aren't inherently 'good'.
And Celeste is a terrible, terrible person.
I really liked this book - I don't think it's for everyone, but I love how unapologetic Nutting is in her writing of this novel.