The relationship gets darker and more difficult as Jack grows from fourteen to fifteen, and finally sixteen at the end of the book. so this was no accident) that she suggests made her feel sexy. Celeste soon finds the perfect boy, Jack, and lures him in with some perverse observations (she claims she saw him standing in his window, staring at the stars, masturbating - it’s true, but she used binoculars. Due to space shortage, her classroom is a convertible/mobile modular (remember those?) that keeps her at a distance from other faculty and staff. Once they do, Celeste feels disgusted by males.

specifically fourteen-year-old boys who have not dipped into puberty yet. But the secret is that Celeste became a teacher so she could get closer to boys. People are jealous of their hotness and his trust fund. Tampa is about Celeste Price, a 26-year-old blond bombshell who is married to a handsome police officer. The actual teacher, Debra LaFave, who had an affair with her fourteen-year-old student. Tampa is based on a true story about a beautiful woman with whom Nutting went to school who later had a relationship with a student. Imagine his friends high five-ing him, and how lucky he must feel. Nutting flipped the narrative and examines what happens when an older woman has a sexual relationship with a minor male. We’re horrified by what a pervert the man is and feel pity for the girl. In interviews, Nutting expressed she was interested in the way society reacts when an older man has a sexual relationship with a minor female. That’s a big leap! The most lascivious-looking button hole you’ve ever seen. Tampa, however, hit it big when published by Ecco, an imprint of Harper Collins, one of the “big five” operations that control most of what we in America read. It’s small enough that I’ve met the guy who started the press, claiming he had to do something while he was getting divorced. You see, Unclean Jobs was published by a small press, Starcherone.

There’s nothing quite as exciting as a short story writer publishing her first novel, and when Tampa can out in 2013, I started obsessively reading interviews about it. This book is also an exercise in great first lines and how they can make the story, shape it into an adventure. I laughed, I was bummed, the stories seemed to teach something I need to dig for, in a good way. The stories were clever, bold, and when I read it in 2011 I left this on Goodreads: Content Warning: statutory rape, vivid descriptions of erogenous zones of male and female bodies, drugging another person, using drugs to tolerate unwanted sex, vivid descriptions of sexual acts, cruel thoughts about people whose bodies don’t fit current society’s ideals, 1st-person point of view from a sexual predator, voyeurism.Īlissa Nutting’s first book, a collection of short stories called Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, was a fantastic reading experience.

Tampa by Alissa Nutting