Tampa – – Alissa Nutting
Genre – – FIction/Contemporary
Published – – July 2, 2013
Rating – -4 Stars
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.
Review
This book was fascinating. That is the only way I can describe it without sounding some type of way. If I am being truly honest, I ate this book right up. I listened to the audiobook in less than 2 days, I couldn’t stop listening. I was so intrigued with this woman and what what going on inside her head. And how she thought her behavior was okay.
There is no discussion when it comes to this topic, it is very taboo. And gross, for lack of better words. If you are faint of heart or very closed minded, this is not for you. And by closed minded, I don’t mean disagreeing with this behavior, because I absolutely disagree with it, but being open to seeing that there are people in this world who have thoughts like this woman has, and who act on those thoughts. The biggest thing being, it is not always men who are pedophiles.
This is not an easy topic to read about, and it for sure can’t be an easy topic to write about. I appreciate that the author committed to this one hundred percent. She did not cut corners and she did not shy away from something to make it less uncomfortable. To make this believable it needed to go to the extremes and she went there. I think it made all the differences between being mediocre and outstanding and this was outstanding.
Do I agree with this behavior? Absolutely not! Do I need to agree with everything to make me love a book? Again, no. To me, that is what makes a great writer. Bringing me into a story that would never have any interest to me at all. I was so interested in Celeste, and her thoughts and behaviors, the sociopath side of her. Crazy always intrigues me.
I listened to the audiobook of this one and I thought it was excellent. It is free on Hoopla, so if this interest you at all, I highly recommend it. But be warned, there are very graphic descriptions of sexual content.
I gave this one 4 stars.
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