2013-08-05
Overhyped
Thoroughly disappointing read after all the media hype. Tailed off far too quick and just didn't live up to its over egged build up.
Updating
+22
Description
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.
Apple Books: Customer Ratings
Ratings & Reviews
3.5 of 5 (34 Ratings)
Apple Books: Customer Reviews
2013-08-04
Thought provoking
It's offensive and vulgar, but I guess that's the whole point of the novel. The main character is completely twisted and disgusting to the point where I actually hated her. I didn't give it 5 stars because it did actually make me feel uncomfortable reading it at some points due to its graphic nature.
2013-07-30
Shocking but great
I was curious to read this after seeing a news article about it. I am quite open minded and had been looking for something different! Obviously the storyline is VERY controversial and I sometimes felt a bit odd reading this but have to admit really enjoyed it. I seriously couldn't put it down, was finished in 2 evenings. It is very well written, definitely shocked me, sometimes awkward and hard to read but totally different and interesting. The real message about the book shines through. The main character is so horrid and unbelievable but endearing, almost comparable to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. Risky but well done Nutting.