266 pages
English language
Published April 30, 2013 by Ecco.
In this novel, "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 …
In this novel, "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."--Publisher's statement.
Wow. This author is amazing. This book was so disturbing I wasn't sure I even wanted to read it, but I am in love with Nutting's style so I gave it a go. Prepare to feel uncomfortable, in a sometimes good way! I can't really explain the feelings this book brings up, I don't have the right words, but think intrigue, disgust, morbid curiosity, and humor for a few! Give it a go if you have the stomach!
This book is what I imagine 50 Shades of Gray to be like: dull, empty characters mixed with descriptions of vibrators and stiffened nipples. I read the book because of its supposed parallels to Nabokov's Lolita, but where Humbert Humbert is an enticingly poetic criminal, Celeste,Tampa's narrator/protagonist, is a one-note pervert. The problem I had with the book is not that Celeste is an unlikable narrator, but that she is an uninteresting narrator.
