Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Who Gets to Be Smart by Bri Lee

Posted December 9, 2021 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Non-Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Who Gets to Be Smart (Goodreads)
Author: Bri Lee
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2021
Pages: 296
Genres: Non-Fiction
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I love the idea that Bri Lee decided to write this book even though she had an agreement with her publisher to write some fiction. There’s something about this that really sticks with me, just the idea that Bri Lee was so passionate about this topic that she neglected her other projects and focused on this topic. Who Get to be Smart is such a work of passion, anger and needing to understand the world and I really enjoyed that experience. I have seen reviews that talk about this book as being unfocused or “all over the place”, for me I think that was what made this such enjoyable read. I felt like this book reads in a way that makes it feel like Bri Lee was having a conversation with me.

The book starts talking about her friend Damian, who was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Looking at the Rhodes Scholarship she came to the realisation that she was no longer eligible to apply for this scholarship due to her age . The requirements for this scholarship is tough, not only do you require some scholastic merit, you also have to have sporting achievements and “qualities of manhood, truth, courage and devotion to duty”. It wasn’t until a 2018 revision of the selection criteria that the wording was more gender neutral. Also, you must be 25 years and under if you were considering this international scholarship. The Rhodes Scholarship accepts about 0.7% of the global applicants.

Australia has recently attempted to do something similar to the Rhodes Scholarship, which has been a disaster. The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation was launched by the former prime minister John Howard and has received plenty of backlash. Originally planned for the Australian National University, I believe it is now at the Wollongong University. Trying to set up a scholarship fund like this in 1902 would have been easier than trying to create it now. Many of the criticism revolves around the idea of awarding a very small group of people verses using the funding to lower education costs for everyone.

Who Get to be Smart focuses on the privileges provided to the wealthy, not just with these scholarship programs, but also private schooling and science grants. The majority of this book looks at the way location, wealth and race all play a part in the education of people. Bri Lee also looking into the effects of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests might have on the future of education.

There is so much in this book and I really enjoyed the way Bri Lee approached the topic. The writing style was the highlight for me, she takes this conversationalist approach that made this so easy to read. I really like the way this is written and would probably make for a great audiobook or podcast. Not only is she providing her thoughts and giving us the information, but she is doing it in a accessible way, with a touch of anger, humour and self-deprecation. This is my first Bri Lee book and the topic really appealed to me, because I do like her writing style, I do wonder if I should try Beauty or Eggshell Skull. I want to read more non-fiction like this, not just about education but also the same ‘laid-back’ conversationalist style, so if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Posted March 24, 2015 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction, Magical Realism / 9 Comments

Title: The Buried Giant (Goodreads)
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2015
Pages: 352
Genres: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism
My Copy: ARC from Publisher

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

The Buried Giant is set in a post-Arthurian Britain that is covered in a strange mist…a mist of unknowing. Axl and Beatrice have not seen their son in years; they barely remember him. One day the couple decide to leave their town and set off to find their son. They expect to run into difficulties, they are old and do not remember much, but nothing can prepare them for what they will discover along the way.

This is the first Kazuo Ishiguro in over a decade and I was very excited to get my hands on this novel. I have heard many people say that The Buried Giant is unlike anything Kazuo Ishiguro has ever done but that is what is brilliant (and annoying) about this author. Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day are also unlike anything else Ishiguro has written. He has an amazing ability to write something different every time and use the genre and the plot as an allegory to explore different themes.

As you may have guessed, The Buried Giant explores the theme of memories; in particular, lost memories. Ishiguro uses the tropes found in fantasy and Arthurian literature to explore these themes. Like the ideas of myths and legends that make for great stories but (generally speaking) the ideas and context behind them are often lost or forgotten about. On their journey Axl and Beatrice meet Sir Gawain which sets up the metaphor of the mist of unknowing. Just how did King Arthur and the Britons come to peace with the Saxon’s?

The more I read Kazuo Ishiguro, the more I love his use of language. He writes beautifully and yet he is not satisfied in just using words to get his message across. He uses imagery and plot as well as genre tropes to help drive his message. Now that I have discovered this, it almost makes me want to retry reading Never Let Me Go for the second time to just explore this depth, as well as his other novels. However I am sure that The Remains of the Day will also remain my favourite.

I was completely fascinated by The Buried Giant and I found myself regularly putting the novel down just so I could dwell on the chapters I have read. There is a lot within the book worth exploring and I know I have only scratched the surface. A re-read of this book may conjure up many more themes and imagery, for now I can dwell on the ones I discovered this time around. While The Buried Giant is unlike anything he has ever written, the beauty and complexity will remind you that you are enjoying a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Cherry Bomb by Jenny Valentish

Posted January 10, 2015 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 0 Comments

Title: Cherry Bomb (Goodreads)
Author: Jenny Valentish
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2014
Pages: 384
Genres: Contemporary
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Nina and Rose Dall have always dreamed of being rock stars. Influenced by her aunty Alannah Dall, a pop sensation in the 1980’s, Nina along with her cousin started a punk band known as The Bain-Maries until being signed and renamed The Dolls. Cherry Bomb tells the story of The Dolls rise to fame and the wild ride they faced while navigating the Australian music scene.

Cherry Bomb is told much like a memoir, where Nina Dall is recounting the career of The Dolls. This allowed Jenny Valentish the ability to write a coming of age story that mixes a “rise to fame” journey with a social commentary of the music industry. Before writing her debut novel, Valenstish worked as a music publicist and journalist with her time spent as a columnist for NME and an editor for Triple J’s magazine Jmag. This knowledge on the music industry allowed her to write a social commentary that focuses on the way woman are treated within the industry.

I picked up this book thinking it was a contemporary and fun read, which it mainly was; I was pleasantly surprised to find the social criticism. Cherry Bomb has shades of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne and High Fidelity by Nick Hornby throughout the novel but for the most part it felt fresh. I was particularly fascinated by the playlist in the back on the book and would love to see a Spotify (Jenny Valentish does have a Cherry Bomb playlist, but it is different to The Doll’s playlist in the back of the book) playlist just so I can list to all those songs.

While this might be something different from what I normally read, I do try to explore all kinds of literature so hopefully people aren’t too surprised to see me read this one. However I will mention that I picked up this novel because the blurbs for the book were all done by Australian musicians, instead of other authors and I thought that was a unique concept and made me feel that Jenny Valentish may have captured the music industry correctly. Cherry Bomb is an entertaining read full of sex, drugs and rock and roll and I look forward to reading Valentish’s next novel.

EDIT: The good people from Allen and Ulwin have already created the Cherry Bomb Spotify playlist.

The Crocodile Club by Kaz Cooke

Posted December 14, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Chick Lit / 4 Comments

Title: The Crocodile Club (Goodreads)
Author: Kaz Cooke
Published: Allen & Unwin, 1993
Pages: 240
Genres: Chick Lit
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

The Crocodile Club tells the story of Selina Plankton, an assistant to the magician The Great Salami, who finds herself out of a job. At the same time she receives an eviction notice. Her life becomes a little strange when she meets a Serbo-Scottish psychiatrist who offers her $10,000 for a first date. However a desperate phone call sends her to Darwin to help a life long friend where Selina is embroiled in a mystery that involves political corruption, mayhem and attempted murder.

Kaz Cooke is an Australian author, cartoonist and radio broadcaster. She is an experienced journalist, with over 30 years’ experience and now the author of advice books like Women’s Stuff, Girl Stuff: your full-on guide to the teen years and Up the Duff: the real guide to pregnancy. I would like to point out when viewing her website there is only one mention of her novel The Crocodile Club and I had to use the find option in my browser to actually find it.

This is a really strange book; on the surface it is this story of a modern Australian woman struggling through life, trying to make the most of her job and find romance. There is that question of etiquette when it comes to being offered $10,000 for a date that plays a role within the novel. There are the normal chick-lit tropes, a quirky protagonist who is hopeless with love, a destructive ex-boyfriend and the light hearted humour.

However Kaz Cooke’s journalistic style comes out every so often with the story and creates these really weird moments. The first time it was about thirty pages into the story and I was learning about the socio-economical make up of Darwin. Later there were moments heavily focused on small-town politics, political corruption and the relationship between government and mining companies. It doesn’t stop there; I was sent on a tangent about foreign relationships and trade between Australia and Asia and even going on about the United States of America. It is almost like Cooke wanted to give the reader all this information to show them what she was trying to do with the story. Though it was meant to be a quirky romance/adventure story and I am sure most readers would have been able to manage without all this information. This was such a strange experience to jump from chick-lit to journalistic research and back again constantly.

I picked up this novel because it was my wife’s favourite book when she was a teenager and putting aside all those heavy moments I can see why. The romantic elements of The Crocodile Club fall into the spectrum of what a teenager would class as romantic, it is the type of novel a young person would try to write. As an adult, I thought it was clichéd, the characters’ actions were juvenile and dialogue was clunky but besides all of that, there were some funny moments. Finally, I could never understand Selina’s obsession with hairpins. That was until she turned into the MacGyver of hairpins.

Merciless Gods by Christos Tsiolkas

Posted December 13, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Short Stories / 8 Comments

Title: Merciless Gods (Goodreads)
Author: Christos Tsiolkas
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2014
Pages: 304
Genres: Short Stories
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

As most people know, I am a big fan of transgressive fiction and in Australia there is one author that doesn’t shy away from a touch or taboo subject. This author is Christos Tsiolkas and he is best known for his two recent novels The Slap and Barracuda. Merciless Gods is his first collection of short stories and deals mainly with sexuality, family and identity.

Author of six novels, Christos Tsiolkas was born in 1965 to Greek immigrant parents. Reading through his novels you quickly get the sense of what it must have been like growing up in suburbia as a Greek immigrant and a homosexual. He likes to explore these themes constantly and you get an idea of just how backwards people’s thinking can be. Then with his breakout novel The Slap, he challenged everyone’s thoughts, tapping into the universal dilemma around discipline and child-rearing.

Merciless Gods seems to be more of a “return to his roots” collection of short stories, which shares similarities with first novel Loaded at any of his other. There is this whole theme about social and personal struggle that play out within these stories. I am impressed with the way Tsiolkas challenges people’s views; particularly when it comes to sexuality and immigrants. There was a particular story that he wrote in Greek and then translated into English that was very powerful.

Christos Tsiolkas has officially become an ‘auto-buy’ author for me now and I will have to read the rest of his backlist sometime soon. Merciless Gods is hard-hitting and not for the faint of heart, he is pushing the boundaries but he does this really well. I am not sure when these stories were originally written, I think that will be interesting to know. However if you have never read this great Australian author, this is probably not the best place to start. Maybe begin with The Slap or Barracuda before working your way up to Loaded and Merciless Gods.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Posted November 26, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Young Adult / 0 Comments

Title: We Were Liars (Goodreads)
Author: E. Lockhart
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2014
Pages: 225
Genres: Young Adult
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Meet Cadence (Cady) Sinclair Eastman; she is seventeen years old from a family that is so wealthy they spend their summers on their own private island. The summers are spent with her cousins Mirren and Johnny, plus her crush Gat. The four of them are so close they are collectively known as the Liars. However, there is a big secret within the family, a secret that has been kept from Cady. An accident when she was fifteen left Cady damaged and with some memory loss. What are they hiding?

I picked up this book because of the marketing campaign; see good marketing does sell books. Basically the concept behind the campaign was to read the book then lie about it; a great way to stop anyone from spoiling the fact that Cady’s grandfather is really a Russian sleeper spy. We Were Liars is this wonderfully secretive novel with a psychological element that slowly gets revealed. The way I view this book is if Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca) wrote a YA novel set in the world of the TV show Revenge.

There are a lot of people that loved this book and to be honest I wasn’t sure if I would be among them. I started off reading this book thinking there wasn’t anything special and it felt like privileged white kids with first world problems. However, like most people, I got to a point where everything clicked and I was floored. Everything started making so much more sense. As you can tell, this is a difficult novel to write about because I don’t want to give away the plot about the zombie apocalypse.

I am of two minds about the writing, on one hand it was pretty basic and I found it incredibly easy to rush through the novel and not miss anything important. However as things start to reveal themselves, you can think back to previous chapters and see all the subtle clues that were missed. In the end, I think E. Lockhart did a brilliant job of making the book so easy to read while packing in subtle evidence that The Sinclair family are just a big crime family. The subtlety worked really well throughout the novel and I feel like I was so blind, I would never have guessed that they were aliens, but the evidence was there.

I may joke about the ending and the fact that it was all a dream but I am just following their marketing campaign. I had a lot of fun reading this book; much like Gone Girl, the twist was done so well and We Were Liars kept me up at night as I desperately tried to finish the book. I am very surprised by this book and I wonder if re-reading this book would be any good. I can’t imagine going into the novel knowing what happens would be any fun, but I am not the kind of person that likes spoilers.

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

Posted March 23, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Fantasy / 0 Comments

Title: Alif the Unseen (Goodreads)
Author: G. Willow Wilson
Narrator: Sanjiv Jhaveri
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2012
Pages: 433
Genres: Fantasy
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Alif is the online persona of a grey hat working in the United Arab Emirates, taken from the first letter in the Arabic alphabet. Alif is a 23 year old Arab/Indian, working in internet security who fell in love with an Arab aristocratic woman he met online. Their relationship is doomed from the start; her family would never accept someone outside her social class, let alone an Indian. Her father has already arranged a more suitable suitor for her; a mysterious and powerful man who is known online as ‘the Hand’, the states leading internet censor. In an attempt to get the girl, Alif has made a powerful enemy, one that forces him to go underground into the world of Jinn’s (genies), ghouls, demons and all the others that remain unseen.

Debut author G. Willow Wilson set out to write a book that can bring her three loves together. A love of comic books and all things geeky, as well as her love of literary fiction and that of her Muslim heritage. The result is Alif the Unseen, a rich blend of cyberpunk and urban fantasy that explores the Arabic culture as well as looks as many social-political issues. Personally I think Wilson set out to expose the bias that the online community has no social consciousness, and educate the world on Muslim culture as well as explore the societal impact of hackivism.

I picked up this novel because G. Willow Wilson is the writer behind the new Ms. Marvel; the fourth character to take on this superhero and is the first Muslim character to have their own Marvel series. After reading the first issue, I wanted to check out Alif the Unseen. I knew it was a cyberpunk/urban fantasy blend but now I expected a strong Arabic or Muslim presence. I didn’t except a literary approach to this genre, but I was pleasantly surprised, Wilson has a lot to say on the Middle East social-politically speaking but also she educates the reader on a culture that is possibly unfamiliar to them.

G. Willow Wilson also takes on Middle Eastern folklore and myths and blends these fables with a religious element. Take jinn for example, we know them as genies but Islamic belief divides sentient beings into three categories. These are Malayka (angels), Nas or Banu Adam (human) and Jinn (the hidden ones). Angels are genderless and have no free will, but humans and Jinn’s are gendered and have free will, this is why Islamics believe Satan was a Jinn and not an angel, as it is impossible for an angel to disobey the will of God. Also playing a role in the story is the hamsa (or the hand of Fatima) which is like a good luck charm in Islamic culture. In the Judeo-Christian world this is often called the hand of Mary or Miriam.

I also want to talk about hackivism. In this novel Alif lives in a heavily censored world; the government believes in having a tight control on what is on the internet. Alif is a grey hat; this is a hacker that doesn’t work for a cooperation of the government. The term comes from the old western metaphor where the good guys wore white hats and the villains had black hats. A grey hat would be someone whose activities and practices fell in a grey area. For Alif, it was a matter of free speech (and possibly money). He provided security for enemies of the Arad stats, militant Islamists and even pornographers. Sites that the government wants to shut down often turned to Alif or another grey hat for internet security.

I can probably go on and talk more about the range of topics that are going on in Alif the Unseen, but I fear I don’t have the knowledge of Middle Eastern folklore or culture, Islam and hackivism. One of the things I enjoy most about reading is the ability to explore different cultures and learn about the world. Alif the Unseen took me into the rich world of the United Arab Emirates and looked at many social issues, in particular class and religion. I’m not much of a fantasy reader but I do seem to prefer urban fantasy, add in the cyberpunk and literary elements and I’m happy. Alif the Unseen will entertain and educate all its readers; most people will just read it for the entertainment but I hope they take a little understanding with them.

Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas

Posted November 3, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literary Fiction / 10 Comments

Title: Barracuda (Goodreads)
Author: Christos Tsiolkas
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2013
Pages: 528
Genres: Literary Fiction
My Copy: ARC from Publisher

Buy: Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Danny Kelly’s dream is to win Olympic gold, and he even transferred to a prestigious private school to help realise this goal. But at this school he was an outsider and was shunned by the rich boys that attend. His coach believes in him, but the rest of the swim team doesn’t and this could start affecting his confidence. Danny’s win at all costs ferocity drives him and his psychotic approach earns him respect as well as the nickname Barracuda.

Christos Tsiolkas is best known for his highly controversial, but brilliant novel The Slap. Going into this book I worried that this wasn’t going to live up to my expectations of the author but I was surprised. My prediction for a clichéd ‘overcome all odds to achieve greatness’ type novel may be right but it is also very wrong. That is the basic plot but I forgot to take into account of Tsiolkas’s ability to incredibly layer stories.

Barracuda started off tame, full of angst but tame compared to The Slap but soon I was in unfamiliar territory. Unflinching, controversial and not afraid to tread into the dark side; the kind of book that is uncomfortable to read but enjoyable to finish. The thing I love about Christos Tsiolkas, apart from the dark and brutal approach, is the profound and thought provoking story telling. He is the master of his craft.

This novel like The Slap is a great look at modern Australian life, but this one isn’t looking at parenting but instead the teenage years. Barracuda’s main focus is not about winning or chasing your dreams but for me it is all about alienation. When I was a teenager I was uprooted from all my friends in Sydney and moved to a small country town in north Queensland, where I had no friends and this novel made me relive that feeling of alienation (which I’ve never forgiven my parents for).

Tsiolkas doesn’t stop there, he likes to add layers upon layers and you spend a lot of time after reading this book just thinking about it. This for me is a sign of a great novel and I love how he dealt with alienation so effectively and then managed to look at struggles with sexual identity as well. I feel like Christos Tsiolkas is not afraid to put more and more problems for one character to deal with and it feels so real, the angst of an Australian teenager growing up in the 90’s was done to perfection.

I will admit while I loved this book, it was uncomfortable and sometimes poking at old wounds but the novel was almost a masterpiece. I did feel like it was a little long and dragged on a little at times but overall I was very pleased. Christos Tsiolkas is fast becoming my favourite Australian author and I really want to read some of his other books; maybe not The Jesus Man but Loaded sounds really good.

Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser

Posted August 22, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literary Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Questions of Travel (Goodreads)
Author: Michelle de Kretser
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2012
Pages: 528
Genres: Literary Fiction
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Laura Fraser is an artistic Australian, who lost her mother at a very early age and her father was cold and distinct towards her, as was her brother. On the other side of the world Ravi Mendes’ life was almost the complete opposite to Laura, but still struggles in life at times; currently he is determined to break into the computer science industry. Alternating from one character to the other, Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel explores why we are all influenced by travel.

Questions of Travel won the Miles Franklin award this year but if it wasn’t for my book club I would never have read it and I think that might have been a mistake. This novel is almost a post-modernist novel in the experimental way the author approached it. I read this book as if the two characters are sitting me down and going through their photo album and telling the story related to each picture. Slowly we get the full story but there are a lot of pieces we have to fill in for ourselves. The reason I thought this was just the way it was written and you have these really short chapters but every now and then you get a long one. Also the dates on each chapter become more specific as we got closer to the present day, almost like the character remembers the year rather than the decade now.

While reading this novel I got the impression that Michelle de Kretser was trying to explore the whole philosophy behind travel; why we do it? What we love about it? That feeling you get being in a strange country. This was a really interesting approach she took and really worked well with the experimental writing style. The author used to write for the Lonely Planet and throughout this novel you can see her small digs at these books and the bureaucracy behind them. Little things like this really helped lighten the mood for the novel.

Questions of Travel has some beautiful language throughout the book and you find yourself really taking the time to enjoy the book (even though I didn’t have much of that before my next book club meeting). This novel demanded more time than I gave it and I might have missed so much but due to time restrictions I had to power through it. There were times I found some great quotes and I wanted to write them down but I was in too much of a hurry (also I never seem to do that but am trying to make more of an effort).

The novel is both thought provoking and emotional; you’ll experience the highs and lows of the two main characters and even if you have found a favourite, both characters offer interesting insights to life and travel. Also on a positive note, this novel also offers one of the best opening chapters I’ve read in recent times, it comes out of nowhere and smacks you in the face. I spent days trying to decide if I liked this book and what I liked about it and that right there is why I enjoyed it; like Slaughterhouse-Five the time spent afterwards thinking about it is what I will remember more than the book itself. I’m not sure if I would recommend this novel to many people, you’d have to be willing to read experimental or post-modernist novels to really enjoy what Michelle de Kretser is doing.

Tampa by Alissa Nutting

Posted July 15, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 0 Comments

Title: Tampa (Goodreads)
Author: Alissa Nutting
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2013
Pages: 272
Genres: Contemporary
My Copy: ARC from Netgalley, ARC from Publisher

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Suburban middle grade teacher Celeste Prices is undeniably beautiful, everyone can see that. Her husband is rich, hardworking, determined and most people think they are the perfect couple. That’s because no one knows Celesta’s secret, her singular sexual obsession for fourteen year old boys. After all this is the real reason she became a teacher and is working at Jefferson Jr. High.

There are three main reasons people will try to avoid this book. Firstly the protagonist is not likeable, how could she be? Secondly, the sad truth is I found a lot of people tend to avoid Juvenalian satire; I’m not entirely sure why but maybe they don’t appreciate it or they forget to remember it is not an indication of the satirist persona. Lastly and probably most importantly, this book is disturbing; probably the most disconcerting book I’ve ever read (American Psycho held this place for a long time) and I found myself having to put it down just to recover.

So why read it? Tampa is a well written debut novel and arguably one of the most talked about novels at the moment. The reason it’s talked about is the subject it satirises; let’s face it, this is a topic that is often never talked about because of its disturbing nature. A female sexual predator is something I’ve never read in a book but this seems to works in Alissa Nutting’s favour. I have to take a moment to talk about the subject matter because this is important. Young teenage boys all seem to have similar fantasies; an older woman, normally a teacher or a babysitter. It’s a common sexual desire for a boy with their budding sexuality; the experienced, already developed older woman, but they don’t realise just how destructive that can be on them. They have no idea how to separate their emotions from the sexual act and this is a slippery slope that can only lead to being hurt. Not to mention the emotional and psychological damage it can do to them.

Then you have the discussion of sexual addiction being covered in this novel as well. Celeste Prices acts with sociopathic meticulousness; lying and manipulating everyone in order to get what she desires. Not just the people around her; she deludes herself as well, always trying to justify her actions. I think it was interesting how Alissa Nutting was able to look at the problems with this fantasy young boys have and how damaging it can be and at the same time have the reader think about sex addiction and how it effects the person.

Tampa is written in the first person perspective of Celeste Prices so as a reader we get to see her trying to justify her actions to herself and the reader. Though as the reader we can see how off her justification is and maybe even remember times in our own life were we have tried justifying making stupid mistakes with similar lies. The thoughts and the desire that Celeste has to the fourteen year old boys is disgusting and are sure to make you feel sick, which is the reason I couldn’t read this book in one sitting.

In fact every time I put down the book, I worried that if I showed my wife any sort of affection that she might get the wrong idea. I found out later that she was worried that if she showed any affection, I might associate it with the book. So I’m glad it was short and I didn’t have to spend too much time reading it. I’m sure my poor wife got sick of me wanting to discuss this subject matter with her, it’s not an easy topic but this novel makes you want to talk about it with someone. She tells me a similar thing happened in Glee where one of the teenage boys was molested by his babysitter when he was young and his classmates thought it wasn’t that bad as it’s every boy’s fantasy.

The fact that you can’t help wanting to talk about this novel and the themes would make this book the perfect choice for a book club which scares me a lot. I hope and pray that this never becomes the next book club book at my local book club. I love the Mary Who? Book club and this is the best indie bookstore in Townsville but I am normally the only male and most of the other people are slightly older than me. This would be the most awkward book to discuss and because I have so much I can say about this novel it would feel really weird, so I hope that it never becomes the next pick for book club.

This has been compared to Lolita and I can see why, the sexual predator and the satirical nature, but personally I think this comparison might do more harm than good. Being compared to a masterpiece like Lolita would put so much pressure on this book and I don’t think it lives up to the beauty of Vladimir Nabokov’s writing. I get why it is compared but I think it tackles different topics and they both should be analysed separately. Having said that it might be a good book to partner with Lolita if your book club has that kind of structure set up.

Lastly I want to quickly talk about the covers because I think they are worth mentioning. In the UK and Australasia the cover is a pink shirt with a button hole. I love this cover, it is very suggestive and makes people look twice and it really suits the book. Apparently, in America, the black cover that I thought looked boring in comparison, is made from black velvet, which might give the same suggestive tones when you pick up the book rather than looking at it. Interesting choices and I think both seem to work really well but I prefer the buttonhole cover.

I should warn people that this book contains graphical sex scenes which are ghastly and off putting, so this book is never going to be an easy read but this is a topic that needs to be discussed more and the book does this really well. I really enjoyed having read this book, but not really while reading it. I’m surprised how much I wanted to talk about the subject, so I think Alissa Nutting achieved what she set out to achieve. I hope people read it soon; I look forward to discussing the book with others.