Tampa

This blistering excavation of the mind of a pedophile is absolutely riveting. Celeste Price becomes a teacher and carefully arranges her life in order to continuously have a fresh supply of young boys on hand. Her entire life revolves around her anticipatory, and then eventual, conquests, and her introspection never once goes beyond her insatiable libido. Her stunning physical beauty seems to deflect the accusations that are eventually directed her way, and Tampa morphs into a damning commentary on the worth of females based solely on their appearance. She can't possibly be that beautiful and be "bad," can she? Nutting somehow manages to make sure that her readers are both attracted to, and repulsed by, Celeste, and provides one hell of a wild ride. Excellent! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

In Alissa Nutting's novel Tampa, 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.

"A brilliant commentary on sex and society." Cosmopolitan

"In this sly and salacious work, Nutting forces us to take a long, unflinching look at a deeply disturbed mind, and more significantly, at society's often troubling relationship with female beauty." San Francisco Chronicle

"A deliriously enjoyable, absolutely shocking book — a morality tale that tempts and taunts readers to succumb to every kind of immorality." BOMB

"Tampa takes on a very serious and disturbing subject with such flair and dark humor and bawdy sexual energy that Nutting is sure to become a member in the small club of authors who turns risky writing into high art." Tin House

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.

Books are often banned for making readers uncomfortable. Sometimes that discomfort comes from having your worldview tested...

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