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Tampa
Tampa
Tampa
Audiobook8 hours

Tampa

Written by Alissa Nutting

Narrated by Kathleen McInerney

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

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.

Editor's Note

A controversial debut…

The “Lolita” of our time, “Tampa” debuted to a thousand criticisms and controversies. But the erotic tale’s brilliance is in artfully exposing the manicured facades of monsters.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateJul 2, 2013
ISBN9780062283528
Tampa
Author

Alissa Nutting

Alissa Nutting is an assistant professor of English at Grinnell College. She is the author of the story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, as well as the novel Tampa.

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Reviews for Tampa

Rating: 3.5624999755597013 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

536 ratings59 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Saying I like this book may be too strong, but I thought the author handled the subject matter well. One disclaimer: this is not a book for the easily offended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    You don't really read or listen to a book like this because you need something warm and cozy for the evening to help you sleep. The description is very straightforward about the kind of book this is so I don't feel you can go into it expecting to have positive feelings. For what it was, Nutting did an excellent job conveying a very uncomfortable topic. I had to stop it a few times to walk away, regroup, and continue. This was very unsettling and not something I normally find on my roster of genres to read. I definitely won't read it again and won't find myself suggesting this out unless someone wants a very disgusting, unnerving book to make them sit there and ponder life. The imageries within it were very vulgar, very vivid, and I honestly skipped through a good chunk of the descriptions. It's been a long time since a book has done that to me. Though, where it lost stars is... It's boring.

    Very predictable with a flat, anti-climatic ending. You don't want anything, but the worse for the main character- she is a pervert after all. I had to check myself a few times where I found myself sympathizing with Celeste's fears, remembering she's the predator here. That's simply how well she's written. She gets into your head so well you forget she's a monster and see her as a human being. She speaks like a true narcissistic, gaslighter. This is something I have seen writers struggle to convey flawlessly, and Nutting did just that.

    For the elegance in her style of writing, and how well everything flowed (there was a clear beginning, middle, and end) I will likely give more of Nutting's work a try, but this one is definitely never gracing my shelves any time soon.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fucked up and confusing, but very important for society to consider these types of scenarios.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ever felt disgusted with yourself for listening to or reading a book? This book made me feel nauseous and in need of a shower to get the disgusting feeling off of me. The MC is utterly deplorable and knows what she is doing is against the law and needs to be hidden. Some scenes in this book made me feel sick to stomach. However, this book is a great look inside the mind of a predator and how she sees things. It is also a great commentary on society and how society views teenage boys who are victims of this predatory behavior. Lastly, it is a great reminder that women are just as capable of this kind of crime.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Tampa is a disgusting and vile book, which is actually a good thing when it's subject matter is middle school teacher preying on young boys to groom for her sexual desires. The author does not hold back on disgusting fantasies and thoughts running through Celeste Price mind. I think the author really did a good job on having the main character know she likes something she shouldn't and is a pervert, but doesn't really care. The book kind of falls apart halfway through. Price pretending to be interested in Buck, her student's father, in order to get more time and an excuse if she is caught there, not terribly unrealistic but pushing it. Then it goes to Price bringing another student to her ex-student's house, that does not make sense at all especially when she planned and was careful so much before. The trial part kind of redeems the book. Price pretty much gets a slap on the wrist for what she has done. Let's face it, society doesn't see women who have sex with underage boys as awful as they see men who do the same thing with young girls. It's not right, but it is how it is sadly, so the outcome of her trial made sense and what she did after it does too.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book has ben on my tbr for years.... But why?! Why I initially added it I can not remeber. Happening to find the audio version on scribd I added it started it blind. Only knowing it was on my tbr forever. Its interesting and rare to see a female sex offender in the spotlight. The writing style was great. It was also uh... Pretty detailed for events. Overall, I'm still not sure why I added this to my.tbr years ago. However I'm glad I found it and read it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    So… this book was exhausting! I had to take many breaks and read something more cozy and less disturbing. I realize that you as the reader are jumping straight into the mind of a psychopath and criminal. Normally I like that in a morbidly curious kind of way. But this book was just constantly graphic and sexual. I did like the ending which let me give it three stars instead of two. I’m glad I finished it but I need something on the lighter side for my next read. Lol
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved the Narrator. The story is OMG…disturbing ?. Some have compared it to Lolita. Yet, it is a female seeking multiple boys. It has way more description of the encounters as well. Lolita has risky subject matter, but Tampa is rated Mature Adult. I was not able to predict what would happen next. It is well written.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is relentless. Not a page goes by without a mention of sex.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Definitely unconventional but riveting. Would recommend for someone with minimal triggers.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book kept my attention and kept me wanting to read more. Sad for it to end!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Uhhhhh wow. This is one of those books where you hate the main character but the writing makes you want to keep reading anyway. The main character is disgusting. A majority of the scenes are disgusting. But it ultimately was an intriguing look into the mind of someone who thinks very differently from how I do.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was ROUGH. You're going to hate this book, and that's why it's so good.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Wow.So, after reading this book, I completely understand why it provoked such strong reactions from people when it was released. I mean, who really WANTS to read a book about a sexual predator using her status as a teacher to seduce young men into destructive relationships? But, I have to admit, I couldn't put it down. I literally read this book in less than a day. It sucked me in like a train wreck you can't look away from and didn't let up until the unbelievable (unless you watch the news) ending.I'm sure by now everyone knows that this book is filled with graphic descriptions of sex and it pulls no punches. You WILL want to take a shower after reading it - it's that gross. Even more disturbing than the graphic nature of the book was the honest, almost sociopathic way in which Celeste, the protagonist, goes about explaining what drives her.The book opens as Celeste, a 24-year-old 8th-grade teacher in Tampa, is preparing for the first day of school. Over the next several weeks she'll peruse the available students in her classes and settle on Jack, a quiet 14-year old in her English class. She then seduces him and embarks on a sexual relationship with him, dodging her police officer husband, his absent divorced father, and a handful of potentially nosy neighbors and coworkers.There is no pretense of feelings on her part, though Jack romanticizes the relationship - for Celeste, it is entirely about sex. Her non-stop fixation on sex borders on the pornographic. (This is not a book you will be inclined to loan out to people or recommend to friends.) Claire is a sociopath. She doesn't attempt to rationalize or pretend that her desires are something they aren't, nor does she attempt to elicit sympathy from the reader by blaming her predilections on past trauma, they just are what they are. She wants to dominate every situation, emotionally manipulating everyone in her life to cave to her needs, and she is matter of fact about it, from start to finish. Strikingly, Celeste speaks of no friends with whom she has an honest relationship. Every single one of the few relationships she has is based on a lie. She shows no contrition for her deviancy, nor does she make any attempt to control it.Through straightforward, graphic prose and a well-developed female antagonist that will remind you of Gone Girl, Nutting has given us an American Psycho-esque look into the mind of a predator. While I'm not sure I liked it, I'm glad I read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loosely based on true events, Tampa is the fictional account of Celeste Price, a beautiful young8th grade teacher sexually obsessed with adolescent boys. Fourteen is her target age, before they start turning into men.Celeste has an empty marriage to a cop named Ford, who’s almost too handsome himself. She can barely stand the thought of him touching her and has to drug herself to have sex with him. Sometimes she drugs him to avoid sex. The book is all about sex, is sexually charged throughout, and the language reflects this. A student’s raincoat is “A hideous color, like the erection of a dog.” The voice is Celeste’s and it is confident, true and pitch perfect throughout the story.Celeste is a narcissist with an extraordinary ability to ignore the wrongness and consequences of her actions. The only time Celeste doesn’t seem to be dissembling is when she admits to not wanting children because if she had a boy she would eventually be tempted by him. And when she tells the baffled Ford – after all has been revealed – “It’s just what I like.” She is unrepentant until the last word of the novel. Celeste’s obsession is who she is.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Eww. Just gross. Not at all what I expected. I’d pass.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Disturbing and I need to sanitize my brain now. Other then that it was sort of well written but then again not. Corvettes don’t have back seats…..
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Full stars for the absolute cajones to right this. It's so over the top and comical while also horrifying.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In which an unhappily married ephebeomaniac begins her career teaching junior high by evaluating the boys for a subject with her most desired characteristics to gratify her sensual passions and makes a successful approach to him. In many ways this is a difficult and flawed book; long sections of its prose reside in a grey area between a romance novel and quasi-pornography, and I defy anybody to identify a single character in it who is the least bit likable. Yet this trainwreck is difficult to look away from; the characters are well-drawn and the plot thickens beautifully. The easy comparison of this as a sort of reverse Lolita is incomplete and flawed in at least one major way; Humbert Humbert is a fool, and our narrator is no fool. Though not exactly likable, her frankness and quickness in anticipating tactics and scenarios is intriguing. And I especially liked that the novel didn't end up as a morality tale.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The subject matter of this book is difficult and distasteful. Yet I was fascinated enough to read on. I was compelled, a bit like the terrible protagonist, to go to the end of the journey with her, to find out what will happen, whether she will ever get caught, or pay the price of her depravity.

    Celeste lives a wealthy lifestyle with a good-looking and rich husband. She has a mansion of a house and an expensive sports-car. She is beautiful, and has everything she needs, or does she?
    Unfortunately for her, she has a ravenous sexual appetite, for underage teenage boys. When the fantasies are no longer enough, she starts her pursuit of her victims in earnest. She takes a job as a teacher, and everything she does in the classroom and in her life thereafter is a mere front to cater for her obscene lust.

    Reading this mercifully short book, is akin to watching a horror movie, you are spellbound by the action, and want to close your eyes, and deny this is actually happening, even on screen, or in a story. One cannot help marvel at the risk Celeste takes, the lies she tells and her absolute lack of scruples in those "relationships". The eroticism of her encounters is more than counterbalanced with a cringe-factor. With each cringe-worthy experience that serves to satisfy her hunger, you are left wondering what she will do next, and the next idea is even more shocking. It is less about the kinkiness of the encounters and more about the self-serving sociopath behavior pattern that emerges. It is fascinating how the first-person narrative fully justifies it. You are gazing into the mind of a despicable pedophile, whose every thought and behavior is fully driven by her urges.

    I am sure that the world is full of terrible out of control people, like child-molesters, murderers and other monsters. The brilliance of creating a character like Celeste, and making her pry on adolescents (not children) gives us a chance to look inside one monster, who initially hides herself very well. We recognize her as someone who cannot escape her proclivities, like an addict. And although Celeste's behavior breaks all moral and decency codes, deep down we know that the difference between her guilt and ours is the magnitude of compulsion and our ability to tame our wants and desires to social code.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I guess "like" isn't the correct term for how I felt about this book, but it's certainly well-written, compelling, topical, and ultimately chilling.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    If you're not easily shocked by frank descriptions of deviant sex, there is not too much to sink your teeth into in this book. The writing itself is fine, but most of the characters lack dimension and depth, many of them reduced to superficial motivation. The subject matter was rich for exploration and possible digressions into other aspects of the main character, but it seemed that the author was intent on portraying her as singularly driven by sexual desire to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Regardless of whether that characterization is realistic or not, the end result is a single-note narrative and a largely tedious reading experience—unless one is entertained by graphic content alone, in which case there are plenty of explicit descriptions of taboo sex. But if that's what you're after, Anaïs Nin and Georges Bataille are more substantial choices.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    So, once you get that this is a clever commentary on society's discomfort with female sexuality ramped up to the Lolitas with lashings of underage rumpy-pumpy, you've pretty much understood the whole thing.

    I liked it. Nutting is no Nabokov but so few writers are that it barely matters. I wouldn't want all my narrators to be this disturbing and amoral, but I'm willing to put up with the odd one or two.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    OK. First things first. This is not a book to buy grandma for Christmas. If this was a Channel 4 TV programme it would be preceded with a voiceover saying "warning - the following programme contains adult themes of a strong sexual nature and of explicit nudity". If you own this book and have teenage boys in the house I would find a sturdy safe to lock it away in.There is a lot of sex in the novel, and I mean a lot. Like on practically every page for the first third of the book especially, and this was before the main character had even got her hooks into one of the students. This, coupled with the front cover which my husband told me assuredly was a picture of a vagina (to which I retorted that it was merely an innocent buttonhole and to keep his dirty thoughts to himself) meant that I found this book rather embarrassing to read on my public transport work commute. The more I opened up the book to hide the cover, the more I displayed paragraphs of copious shagging to whoever might happen to be glancing over my shoulder. It felt like there was a flashing arrow over my head with the words "depraved middle-aged woman reading dirty book alert" emblazoned on it.It's a book that means to shock, mostly as the sex offender in question is a hot young woman and not some lecherous old man (not sure why Harvey Weinstein sprang to mind there). Celeste is a married teacher whose libido is off the scale, and unfortunately it is young 14 year old boy students who push her buttons, so to speak. For the first third of the book I thought it was very OTT on the graphic sexual content, and the protagonist preying on young teenagers was a very unsettling context. However, unlike 50 Shades of Grey which is all sex and no writing talent, Nutting is a good writer, and once the storyline properly gets going it becomes a gripping and witty read. The reader never becomes sympathetic to Celeste and her deviant ways, but her extreme sexual predator nature makes for some very funny scenes. There's also a great minor character - a fellow teacher - who's akin to Melissa McCarthy's Megan character from the film Bridesmaids, and she adds a lot of humour.It's an unsettling book, and Nutting purposely does that to you as a reader. You're happily reading away one minute and then feel decidedly uncomfortable the next for enjoying a book that has a sexual deviant who preys on young people at its core. She also pushes some interesting questions within the book. If the sexes were reversed we'd be in no doubt that the (male) teacher was a disgusting paedophile, but when it's a hot young female teacher and pubescent sex-obsessed boys who are willing accomplices does it still feel like clear cut abuse?This is most certainly not a book for everyone, and on that basis I would not recommend that you all rush out to your local bookshop to pick up a copy. Having said that, it's a good read.4 stars - shocking yet funny and unlike anything you'll have read before. Now to pick up something suitably straight-laced to redeem my reputation on the bus...

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In her novel TAMPA, Alissa Nutting successfully portrays an interesting female character, one to be pitied as tragic. A cursory reading might give the impression that the novel is merely teen porn for young males fantasizing about hot teachers, but from a literary perspective, I see much more going on here.

    Celeste's striking beauty is not the book's deeper focus. Her extremely narrow perception of masculine attractiveness is the focus. She's not attracted to males or men, but rather young males caught at a moment of transition--as if running past the lens of a camera--a flicker of worth, a flicker of mortality frozen and desired, and then the horror of a young man emerging and becoming a man.

    Celeste, without any intellectual depth of mind, without any emotional attachment to any human being or even any other living creature for that matter, without any capacity for love or genuine emotion, is masterfully portrayed as a human doll with only a thousandth of a regular human's nerves intact. These nerves are connected to her genitals and breasts and a tiny portion of her brain that moves her like a robot into situations where those few nerves are stimulated.

    Nutting evokes our sympathy when Celeste reveals that all she wants is to enjoy these fleeting slivers of male identity in transition, but she is so incapable of thought that she puts herself in the most absurd settings imaginable: first as a teacher under constant tension of discovery, and even more absurd, in Jack's private home across the street from a nosy gossip who ridiculously never notices her coming and going regularly in her Corvette. With this red flag waving, obviously the book is not meant as realism. It is a fusion of male teenage fantasy and waking nightmare.

    SPOILER: In the final paragraphs Celeste says she'll eventually have to look for her fleeting young boys "in an urban area with runaways hungry for cash whom I can buy for an evening" (262). That Celeste doesn't realize that she could have done this from the beginning and simplified her life, seems to be Nutting's main point--Celeste is a tragic figure to be pitied, a few nerves and curves but no mind and most tragically, no heart for love. And she is okay with that.

    Celeste confesses to her nightmarish imprisonment when she says of her once desired Jack and Boyd, that them now being almost 18 is sickening to think of, and if Boyd were to appear she "would have a visceral reaction of nausea--it would be no less horrifying than seeing a three-hundred-year-old corpse reanimated" (262). For Celeste (now 30) to see Boyd (now 18) would be pure horror. This is not your average high school fantasy fiction. This book is tangled in the dark. It is about an externally beautiful woman who couldn't be further from being at peace with the natural realities of life.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a hard one to rate. It was intriguing to read and root so much against an awful character.

    Also to examine society's views on something like this when it happens.

    The character is sick but Nutting brings something incredibly gross to life with some great writing.

    Ending is meh.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Tampa is a disgusting and vile book, which is actually a good thing when it's subject matter is middle school teacher preying on young boys to groom for her sexual desires. The author does not hold back on disgusting fantasies and thoughts running through Celeste Price mind. I think the author really did a good job on having the main character know she likes something she shouldn't and is a pervert, but doesn't really care. The book kind of falls apart halfway through. Price pretending to be interested in Buck, her student's father, in order to get more time and an excuse if she is caught there, not terribly unrealistic but pushing it. Then it goes to Price bringing another student to her ex-student's house, that does not make sense at all especially when she planned and was careful so much before. The trial part kind of redeems the book. Price pretty much gets a slap on the wrist for what she has done. Let's face it, society doesn't see women who have sex with underage boys as awful as they see men who do the same thing with young girls. It's not right, but it is how it is sadly, so the outcome of her trial made sense and what she did after it does too.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rarely do I encounter a novel as unique—or as perversely taboo—as this one. Celeste Price, the narrator and protagonist of Tampa, is a beautiful, blonde, 20something eight grade English teacher who is married to an attractive, wealthy police officer. She is also a voracious pedophile who lusts after the 14-year-old boys she teaches. It might be logical to presume that Celeste, in telling her tale, would rationalize her desires, obfuscate, make excuses, or otherwise try to justify her thoughts, feelings, and actions. That is not, however, the case. Despite all of her reprehensible flaws and immorality, Celeste is brutally, icily honest about her lust for pubescent males. She knows she’s awful, and she offers no apologies for her deviant appetites. She is, in fact, quite aware of her libido and the potential consequences—she chooses her targets with great precision and plans her seductions meticulously. She also engages in wild fits of paranoia. And she has a biting, bitter sense of humor that almost—but not quite—makes her just the least bit sympathetic. But the most flattering thing to be said of her character is that she is not an unreliable narrator. While she is quite focused on deceiving her husband, her colleagues, and her administrators about her secret desires, she is utterly frank with the reader.And that stark honesty is just as responsible as her pedophile libido for creating the unease evoked by reading this novel. Not only does the explicit taboo of the narrative create a virtually pornographic guilt within the reader, but Celeste lures us into her confidence, thus implicating us in her immorality as well. We alone are privy to her depravity. Needless to say, this is quite an uncomfortable read. Ultimately, Nutting’s skill as a writer (especially as the creator of such a compelling antihero) triumphs over the novel’s sometimes incredulous plot—a few unanticipated consequences conveniently propel the narrative, and the resolution is not entirely plausible. But Nutting’s style is intriguing enough to spark interest in her future efforts.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Let me just start out by saying that Alissa Nutting doesn't care if you're uncomfortable. There's not a page of this novel that doesn't make somebody unhappy. Celeste Price is a twenty-six year old middle school English teacher. She's also a pedophile, relentlessly fantasizing about boys and then using her position to prey on them. Like Humbert Humbert, she's full of rationalizations about her behavior; unlike him, she's devoid of the cultural wrappings that served to make what he did palatable. She's perfectly aware of the potentially devastating consequences to herself if she is unmasked and utterly unconcerned about the effects on the boys she manipulates. Tampa is told from Celeste's point of view. It's an unpleasant place to be. She's a consummate manipulator of everyone from her victims to her husband to her co-workers. She knows how to use her youth and beauty to distract people. She's also deeply insecure as her ability to lure victims is entirely based on her youth and beauty. Nutting is doing some interesting work here. She's written a compelling, compulsively readable novel about something terrible. She makes the reader look at what Celeste is doing and the excuses she makes, even as she confronts the reader with how differently we would regard the same narrative from a middle-aged man.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The easiest thing to say about Alissa Nutting's "Tampa" is that it's a gender-swapped "Lolita". But I've read "Lolita," and Alissa Nutting's "Tampa" is no "Lolita." The real genius of Nabokov novel was that he wrote novel about a pedophile having an affair with a fourteen-year-old girl and came close to convincing you that he'd really written a novel about everything but that. Humbert Humbert is a pervert, yes, but he's also a man obsessed with evanescent beauty, a aesthete who's been tempted by beauty and simply given in. An old-fashioned Cold War-era European snob, he sometimes Dolores Haze to access the fun, empty, disposable commercial culture he both loathes and secretly craves, and sometimes I think that this aspect of Nabokov's book is played down too much. But that's precisely what's wrong with "Tampa." All we get here is Celeste's explicitly consumeristic greed: for luxury items, beauty products, nice cars, and expensive meals. Her lust for young boys might just just be another item on her shopping list. It might, I suppose, be satire, but "Tampa" is played so straight-faced that I'm not sure that it is: Celeste's take on American consumerism is, to put it mildly, less conflicted than Humbert Humbert, and the author's intent here seems to be to shock and nothing else. To say that Celeste isn't as deep a character as Humbert Humbert is and that Nutting isn't one-quarter the writer that Nutting is is to understate the case. "Lolita" was a beautiful thing in its own right: the sort of thing that its main character would have loved: by contrast, "Tampa" seems to be written with a sledgehammer. There's little here but Celeste's monomaniacal desire. She's very likely some sort of sociopath, but, as other reviewers have noted, sociopaths are, like most egotists, sort of boring. The author does a good job of what Celeste gets from pubescent boys that she doesn't get from grown men, which is commendable in itself, but she herself seems to be something of a blank slate: we hear almost nothing about her life before she became a wife and a teacher, and little enough about the parts of her life that don't involve seducing teenagers. There's nothing here but plot, and when your protagonist's an enormous, unlikable egoist, that's just not enough. Even after having made these criticisms, the one thing that I think that the author gets right is the sex, and, since there's little else here, that's a big point in the book's favor. Celeste isn't really much of a moral actor, and the author mostly withholds judgment, but she does manage to communicate the physical and emotional aspects of teenage boys that Celeste finds attractive in unblinking detail, which is difficult to do, as teenage boys can often be awkward, liminal creatures. This is a book where the unformed psychology and physiology of teenage boys is precious and full-grown masculinity seen as stomach-churningly repellent, which neatly turns most grown women's perspectives upside-down. The sex scenes in "Tampa" are explicit and furious, sometimes without being terribly erotic. But then there's the moments when Nutting ably captures her male character's vulnerability, or their fragile, half-grown bodies, or when Celeste considers that every time she tries something new with one of her lovers, it's one last thing she'll get to try with them for the first time. Humbert Humbert, of course, would never have put things so crudely. But this may be the one thing that these two characters have in common: the love -- or at least desire for -- for something fleeting and necessarily impermanent. But that doesn't make Nutting's novel a good one. Shocking, explicit, honest, but ultimately shallow. Recommended to those who enjoy literary oddities for their own sake, but to no-one else.