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Book Review: Tampa by Alissa Nutting
Jan. 31st, 2015 07:18 pmTitle: Tampa
Author: Alissa Nutting
Published: New York: HarperCollins, 2013
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 277
Total Page Count: 153,277
Text Number: 448
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Beautiful Celeste and her handsome husband seem perfect--but when Celeste begins teaching at the local high school, she does it in search of a 14-year-old lover. I suppose the takeaway of Tampa should be that everyone's interior monologue justifies their actions to themselves, even/especially if they're as wildly unreliable and as awful as a pederast. But while some of the external glimpses of Celeste, moments when we get a hint of what she looks like from the outside, provide effective contrast, Celeste's narrative is unconvincing. Her characterization is bullet-point, unmodulated and without complexity; the way she objectifies her own body is excessive and unjustified. The sum effort is more tawdry than effective, more exaggerated than chilling, but without the bite of true satire. Even Homes's The End of Alice was better than this.
Author: Alissa Nutting
Published: New York: HarperCollins, 2013
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 277
Total Page Count: 153,277
Text Number: 448
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Beautiful Celeste and her handsome husband seem perfect--but when Celeste begins teaching at the local high school, she does it in search of a 14-year-old lover. I suppose the takeaway of Tampa should be that everyone's interior monologue justifies their actions to themselves, even/especially if they're as wildly unreliable and as awful as a pederast. But while some of the external glimpses of Celeste, moments when we get a hint of what she looks like from the outside, provide effective contrast, Celeste's narrative is unconvincing. Her characterization is bullet-point, unmodulated and without complexity; the way she objectifies her own body is excessive and unjustified. The sum effort is more tawdry than effective, more exaggerated than chilling, but without the bite of true satire. Even Homes's The End of Alice was better than this.
