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readingbooksandstuff 's review for:
Tampa
by Alissa Nutting
The comparison between Lolita and Tampa is inevitable. What other kinds of books will have the reader go on a journey with a main character that is a pedophile? I don't know about other readers, but personally, I only know these two so I can't help but compare them. I don't think it's surprising for me to say that they're actually quite different from each other, and not just in writing style, but in how the subject matter and the characters are handled. Tampa can almost be a criticism on how society treats beautiful women. Particularly privileged white women. Like how it is easier for people to ignore bad things when they also have the capacity to be abusers. One of the things that Tampa might share with Lolita is the fact that you are in no way rooting for the protagonist. There was no “oh man i hope they end of together.” It was more like “I can’t wait until she gets sent to jail.”
I remember being weary about reading Lolita because I was afraid that it was going to romanticize an legitimately abhorrent issue. To my relief, it didn't romanticize it at all and instead painted the protagonist as completely delusional, and hiding behind a facade of so-called intelligence. Tampa on the other hand doesn't have pretty prose and flowery language. The book is crude and incredibly explicit. There's no hiding of the character's predatory nature, and it was supremely uncomfortable reading a first-person narrative of someone who was meticulously planning statutory rape. It was both shocking and fascinating. I had to disconnect from the main character's psychopathic nature otherwise I think I would have started screaming. Being able to disconnect however, gave me a better time of being a more objective reader- if that can be believed. Maybe that speaks more of Alissa Nutting's ability to write about this subject matter, and be able to keep the reader's attention enough for them to continue. It didn't stop me from feeling wildly uncomfortable and in need of a cleansing afterwards though.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how to rate this book. It lands in an area so far out of my comfort level that I have no idea if I enjoyed it or not. It was both too fascinating and horrifying for me to come to any conclusion.
Spoiler
Too bad that didn't exactly happen. And oh boy did that give me bad feelings.I remember being weary about reading Lolita because I was afraid that it was going to romanticize an legitimately abhorrent issue. To my relief, it didn't romanticize it at all and instead painted the protagonist as completely delusional, and hiding behind a facade of so-called intelligence. Tampa on the other hand doesn't have pretty prose and flowery language. The book is crude and incredibly explicit. There's no hiding of the character's predatory nature, and it was supremely uncomfortable reading a first-person narrative of someone who was meticulously planning statutory rape. It was both shocking and fascinating. I had to disconnect from the main character's psychopathic nature otherwise I think I would have started screaming. Being able to disconnect however, gave me a better time of being a more objective reader- if that can be believed. Maybe that speaks more of Alissa Nutting's ability to write about this subject matter, and be able to keep the reader's attention enough for them to continue. It didn't stop me from feeling wildly uncomfortable and in need of a cleansing afterwards though.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how to rate this book. It lands in an area so far out of my comfort level that I have no idea if I enjoyed it or not. It was both too fascinating and horrifying for me to come to any conclusion.