Tampa; Alissa Nutting

Tampa; Alissa Nutting

Ecco - 2013

Beware -- this story will shock some readers, but it's really a page turner.

Celeste Price is a 26 year old beauty with a gorgeous husband, money and a hot little red Corvette.  She's also just landed her dream job teaching English to eight graders at a Tampa school. 

She's so excited about beginning this new job she can't sleep and her mind keeps racing. It's not the idea of molding the minds of her new students that excites her, instead she sees this job as the perfect opportunity to fulfill her fantasies -- by having sex with young boys.  

Celeste's first conquest Jack Patrick, age 14 who in her eyes is just about perfect -- a little shy and not the type to brag about his conquests with the pretty teacher.  He lives alone with his divorced father who occasionally work late and things get hot hot hot very quickly.  Of course her plans don't work out perfectly and complications do arise along the way.

Celeste is a piece of work. She's vain, judgmental, outrageous, a sexual predator and sociopath. She detests her handsome husband who she married for money and, who at 31 is too old to satisfy her fully.  Some of what this woman does will shock you and other things might make you feel guilty for laughing out loud.  

The story is told from Celeste's POV which is perfect as it makes you realize even more just how twisted she is.  For me though an evil, well-developed character like Celeste makes for a much more entertaining read than a likable, straight shooter.  Some of the things that happen in this story are ridiculous, but it is all part of the shock value delivered in this novel.

This book would make a great discussion book, but I doubt you'll find many library book groups selecting it since the main character is clearly a sexual predator.and the story is definitely cringe-worthy. 

The book is loosely based on the real life, Debra Lafave case in Florida. Readers who enjoy stories with deeply troubled characters and fiction that at times may be uncomfortable to read might want to give this one a try. It's not perfect, but I did enjoy it and read it in less than 4 hours as it was kind of hard to put down.

4/5 stars

(library)

(Cover comment - the hardcover I had from the library was the stark black cover, and although both seemed a bit boring, I am not sure what else would be appropriate after having read the book)  This book was brought to my attention by Jackie - Farm Lane Books.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Summerlong; Dean Bakopoulos

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros where I share the first paragraph (maybe 2) of a book I am reading or thinking of reading soon. 

Summerlong; Dean Bakopolus

ECCO - 2015

PART 1
"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one" ---Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

1.

"In the hay gold dusk of late spring, Don Lowry takes his usual walk through town and out to the fields beyond it.  In the newly turned black earth, he smells energy and promise, which buoys him in a way he has not felt buoyed in sometime, and he feels, along with the whole twitching prairie, as if he is on the verge of something either beautiful or terrible.  It is always hard for him to know which.  And this is why, while walking home, when he sees a woman, her body sprawled beneath a thick, scabbed-up sycamore at the darkening edge of Merrill Park, he believes that she's fallen from a high bough."

What do you think -- keep reading or pass?
(feel free to join in by posting your link below)

New Books - favorite imprints

It's no secret that I have long been drawn to Europa Editions and New York Review Book Classics --(2) of my favorite imprints (but, yes I have other favorite imprints as well--more on that at another time).

Adding to my already large collection are (3) new books that I purchased last week and am looking forward to reading.  Has anyone read them?

• Sleepless Nights; Elizabeth Hardwick (NYRB) - 2001  ----In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick's finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years.
• Divorce Islamic Style:; Amara Lakhous (Europa) - 2012 ---It's 2005. The Italian secret service has received intel that a group of Muslim immigrants based in the Viale Marconi neighborhood of Rome is planning a terrorist attack. Christian Mazzari, a young Sicilian who speaks perfect Arabic, goes undercover to infiltrate the group and to learn who its leaders are. Christian poses as Issa, a recently arrived Tunisian in search of for a job and a place to sleep. He soon meets Sofia, a young Egyptian immigrant dressed in a burqa who lives in the neighborhood with her husband Said, a.k.a. Felice, an architect who has reinvented himself in Italy as a pizza cook.
• Asleep in the Sun; Adolfo Bioy Casares (NYRB) - 2004 ---Lucio, a normal man in a normal (nosy) city neighborhood with normal problems with his in-laws (ever-present) and job (he lost it) finds he has a new problem on his hands: his beloved wife, Diana. She’s been staying out till all hours of the night and grows more disagreeable by the day. Should Lucio have Diana committed to the Psychiatric Institute, as her friend the dog trainer suggests? Before Lucio can even make up his mind, Diana is carted away by the mysterious head of the institute. Never mind, Diana’s sister, who looks just like Diana—and yet is nothing like her—has moved in. And on the recommendation of the dog trainer, Lucio acquires an adoring German shepherd, also named Diana. Then one glorious day, Diana returns, affectionate and pleasant. She’s been cured!—but have the doctors at the institute gone too far?

Asleep in the Sun is the great work of the Argentine master Adolfo Bioy Casares's later years. Like his legendary Invention of Morel, it is an intoxicating mixture of fantasy, sly humor, and menace. Whether read as a fable of modern politics, a meditation on the elusive parameters of the self, or a most unusual love story, Bioy's book is an almost scarily perfect comic turn, as well as a pure delight.

Saturday Snapshot

Saturday Snapshots is hosted each week by  West Metro Mommy Reads . To share a photo or a few  there are a few rules, check them out at Melinda's blog.

No more work for me! Thoughtful coworkers got me this lovely rich and delicious chocolate mousse cake this week along with an Amazon gift card.

Coming Soon to a Book Store Near You -- Villa America; Liza Klausmann

I love the sound of this one. how about you?

Villa America; Liza Klaussmann

Little Brown - August 2015

A dazzling novel set in the French Riviera based on the real-life inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is The Night.

When Sara Wiborg and Gerald Murphy met and married, they set forth to create a beautiful world together-one that they couldn't find within the confines of society life in New York City. They packed up their children and moved to the South of France, where they immediately fell in with a group of expats, including Hemingway, Picasso, and Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. 

On the coast of Antibes they built Villa America, a fragrant paradise where they invented summer on the Riviera for a group of bohemian artists and writers who became deeply entwined in each other's affairs. There, in their oasis by the sea, the Murphys regaled their guests and their children with flamboyant beach parties, fiery debates over the newest ideas, and dinners beneath the stars. 

It was, for a while, a charmed life, but these were people who kept secrets, and who beneath the sparkling veneer were heartbreakingly human. When a tragic accident brings Owen, a young American aviator who fought in the Great War, to the south of France, he finds himself drawn into this flamboyant circle, and the Murphys find their world irrevocably, unexpectedly transformed.

A handsome, private man, Owen intrigues and unsettles the Murphys, testing the strength of their union and encouraging a hidden side of Gerald to emerge. Suddenly a life in which everything has been considered and exquisitely planned becomes volatile, its safeties breached, the stakes incalculably high. Nothing will remain as it once was.

Liza Klaussman expertly evokes the 1920s cultural scene of the so-called "Lost Generation." Ravishing and affecting, and written with infinite tenderness, VILLA AMERICA is at once the poignant story of a marriage and of a golden age that could not last.

Descent; Tim Johnston

Descent; Tim Johnston

Algonquin - 2015

In some ways this thriller seemed like a story that has been told before, but it was more than your run of the mill mystery.

The Courtland family is taking a last minute family vacation in the Rocky Mountains, right before their daughter Caitlan is to leave home for college. One morning Caitlan, a track star, sets out for a run and younger brother Sean 15, rides ahead on his bike on a somewhat deserted road. Sean is hit by a car, injured and with no cellphone in their possession to call for help, Caitlan reluctantly agrees to accept a ride to get help for her brother, but instead is abducted.  Meanwhile, someone else gets Sean help and, in the hospital he has no memory of the accident. When the parents are contacted and ask about their daughter, the sherrif is puzzled.

The rest of this thriller deals with how the rest of the already fractured family copes over a three year period.  The father, Grant, drinks too much and has been unfaithful to wife Angela in the past. Angela comes across as a weak woman, but she still carries guilt issues from a childhood tragedy, and now her daughter is missing. Brother Sean, feels plenty of responsibility for his sister's disappearance since it was his accident that set the abduction in motion.

The story unravels slowly with the accident and abduction happening early on, The personal guilt and the effects on each family member seemed realistic enough, but I actually wanted to read more about Caitlan's ordeal.  The author is slow to reveal her torment, so the tension builds and builds.

I enjoyed this thriller; it held my interest, but would have preferred more of a focus on Caitlan and less on the personal pain of her family at times. If you like thrillers, try this one and decide.

4/5 stars

eGalley

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Invisible Ellen; Shari Shattuck

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where I share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book I am reading or thinking about reading soon.

Invisible Ellen; Shari Shattuck

Putnam - 2014

"Occasionally, though not very often, Ellen Homes would wonder how she gained two hundred seventy-three pounds and simultaneously disappeared.  Not that she necessarily need an answer, or even wanted one, because, simply put, being unseen was everything Ellen ever wanted.

It was also all she could remember.  Her mother, a noun she used for lack of an inoffensive alternative, had apparently at some point forgotten she had a daughter.  Ellen had a vague memory of the woman packing up vodka bottles and a glass pipe before leaving her alone in a grubby room of a halfway house when she was five.  The only thing she clearly recalled from that event was the gnawing hunger, and the joy of eating a cinnamon bun someone had eventually given her.  But the details of life with that woman, and especially that particular day, Ellen enthusiastically and effectively smothered, perfectly under artificial non dairy dessert topping, or gravy."

What do you think -- keep reading or pass?
(feel free to join in by posting your link below)