A challenging but ultimately rewarding (and even in its own wonderfully twisted way, comic) exploration of the perverse mind of an older female teacher who is totally obsessed with young boys. Set aside your inborn societal prejudices and read this as a dark, noir tale of perverse explorations with its own, inexorable inner logic. You might take a strong distaste to the book and its first person narrator, but it's a considerable achievement in creating a monstrous character who, murders apart, ranks with Hannibal Lecter in the pantheon of inordinately seductive grotesques.
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.
'Brave and beautifully written; a provocative look at a taboo subject.' -- Irvine Welsh
'Tampa is an instant classic. A dirty, funny, shocking, provocative, Nabokovian scandal-in-waiting that will be read and mis-read and fiercely debated.' -- Matt Haig
'Tampa is a wild ride - sexy, fast, funny, and frightening, the counterpoint to Lolita. Humbert Humbert is tame by comparison. You won't want anyone to know how much you enjoyed reading this book.' -- David Vann
'Tampa charms and seduces you into the mind of its remorseless female protagonist then twists the knife by skating uncomfortably close to your own inner darkness. Lock up your sons.' -- Viv Albertine
Author
About Alissa Nutting
Alissa Nutting is an assistant professor of creative writing at John Carroll University. She is the author of the award-winning collection of stories, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Oprah, Tin House, Fence and Bomb, among others. This is her first novel.
