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Sunday, February 27, 2022

Review: Tampa by Alissa Nutting

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Tampa
by Alissa Nutting

Publisher: Ecco
Publish Date: July 2, 2013
Kindle Edition
277 Pages
Standalone
Genre: Contemporary

In Alissa Nutting’s novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student.
 
Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure.
 
Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psycho–esque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire. Laced with black humor and crackling sexualized prose, Alissa Nutting’s Tampa is a grand, seriocomic examination of the want behind student / teacher affairs and a scorching literary debut.

My Review:


I need to wash my eyes out after reading this book. SCRUB A DUB DUB. Holy horny sociopathic teacher.  Remember when we heard so much about women teachers having sex with their students?  Meet Celeste - not sure if she's the worst of the worst but she's certainly.... something. 

Nutting puts us right into Celeste's mind and we get trapped there.  She NEVER lets up on the needs of her loins, how she's going to get it, what she has to do to get it... and she will do WHATEVER it takes to satiate her needs.  ANYTHING.  After so much reading of this, I think I became as numb as her hoo-ha did after her marathons with her vibrator... hey now....

There's something to be said about how people see abuse.  In this case, how could these teenage boys possibly say no to such an attractive older teacher who comes on to them?  HOW?!  And such an attractive woman saying she's too pretty for jail. UFF. I definitely think this was somewhat satirical but I'm still trying to process who the fuck Celeste is and if someone could possibly be this sociopathic... I mean, I'm sure they can but um...

Yeah - this isn't the easiest read - especially because the numerous sex scenes involve 14-year-old boys, and you are VERY aware of that.  Nutting certainly doesn't shy away from details within these scenes either. But it goes further than that in terms of emotional play and manipulation. I don't think I've ever hated a character worse.  And I'm not even sure how to rate this book.  Did I enjoy it? No. But could I stop reading? No.  I'm just gonna play this one down the middle.  I'm not mad I read it and while disgusting in nature, it's not the worst thing I've read either (I mean, she doesn't eat babies and I've read books where people do so...).

Watch your kids.. watch their teachers.

★★★

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