Sarah Churchwell VS Tampa by Alissa Nutting
When Alissa Nutting found out her old classmate Debra LaFave had been arrested for sleeping with a teenage pupil, she did what any aspiring writer would do and turned the sorry tale into a salacious, paedo-lite beach read. Tampa is – predictably – being promoted as the nubile lovechild of Lolita and Notes on a Scandal. Sarah Churchwell, writing in the Guardian, put it bottom of the class:
“Lacking any other saving stylistic or satirical grace, the novel ends up as fixated on sex with children as its protagonist. In the end, I don’t want to be inside the mind of a sociopath; it proves the most unedifying place imaginable. If only you could always count on a paedophile for a fancy prose style, too.”
