Publisher's Weekly Review
In Nutting's graphic first novel (after her story collection, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls), soon-to-be eighth-grade English teacher Celeste Price can barely contain her excitement about her adolescent boys; the 26-year-old passes the night "in an excited loop of hushed masturbation" while her good-looking but dull-witted husband slumbers. Celeste's mind is as pragmatic as her body is luscious, and her patience ("I had to regard the students like a delicate art exhibit and stay six feet away at all times, lest I be tempted to touch") pays off. Before long, she coaxes shy Jack into what becomes the first of many liaisons. Unlike American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, Celeste is aware of her depravity-she fears that were she to work as a model, as some suggest, photos would capture "a soulless pervert"-but she indulges anyway. Her bold choice of meeting Jack at his house after school leads to unsurprising complications, as does the boy's budding love. When Celeste's usual caution erodes, all might be lost were this young woman not lover and fighter both. Nutting's work creates a solid impression of Celeste's psychopathic nature but, unlike the much richer Lolita, leaves the reader feeling empty. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A middle school teacher in Tampa, Fla., goes to outrageous lengths to hide her voracious sexual appetite for adolescent boys. Nutting certainly brought dark overtones to her story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (2010), but even that auspicious debut pales next to the unclean psyche at the heart of her first novel. In a story that makes Nicholson Baker's work look hygienic by comparison, Nutting unleashes a devious temptress whose acts of deception are as all-consuming as her incessant masturbatory frenzy. Our narrator, Celeste Price, looks absolutely harmless on the surface. She's married to a rich suburban police officer, drives a hot car, and her looks could cause car wrecks. Unfortunately for her, Celeste is also deeply, unfixably broken. She says that the loss of her virginity at age 14 imprinted on her, and she has been working unceasingly as a student teacher to get to the mother lode: a gig as a full-time teacher of eighth-grade boys. In her first year, she obsesses over her chosen target, young Jack Patrick, on whom she ruminates in the most illustrative fashion. "Something in his chin-length blond hair, in the diminutive leanness of his chest, refined for me just what it was about the particular subset of this age group that I found entrancing," Celeste confesses. "He was at the very last link of androgyny that puberty would permit him: undeniably male but not man." Once she convinces Jack to give in, Celeste performs every salacious, graphic sexual act under the sun--almost as if she is committing these brazen acts on him and not with him. She even starts sleeping with her lover's father just to cover her tracks. For decades, transgressive fiction has traditionally been grim, male and graphic. For those few voices asking why there aren't more women working in this swamp, this one's for you. A taxing attempt to penetrate the mind of female child molesters with grimy, mundane results.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
On the surface, 26-year-old Celeste Price seems to have it all. She's stunningly beautiful, married to a handsome police officer from a wealthy family, and about to start a new job as a junior-high teacher. But Celeste is harboring a dark secret: she is driven by a sexual obsession with prepubescent teenage boys. Her new job allows her unrestricted access to the objects of her lust, and she soon settles on one 14-year-old Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in her third-period class. Celeste stalks Jack and discovers he lives alone with his father before making her move on the boy in her classroom. Her seduction of Jack is successful, and Celeste and the boy are soon engaging in steamy trysts wherever and whenever they can manage them. Though Celeste is able to keep her dim-witted husband at bay, she is thrown a curveball when Jack's father, Buck, expresses interest in her. A chilling examination of a sociopath whose beautiful face masks her pathology, Nutting's debut is taut, sexually explicit, and utterly engrossing.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2010 Booklist
