Alissa Nutting, author of the novel about a female teacher having an affair with a 14-year-old pupil, explains why she wrote it
Alissa Nutting … author of Tampa. Photograph: Faber
Alissa Nutting's debut novel, Tampa, about a female teacher who grooms her 14-year-old pupil, has been described as "disgusting", "sickening" and the summer's most controversial book. It has even been banned in some bookshops in Australia. Written from the view of Celeste Price, a sociopathic 26-year-old who becomes a teacher in order to prey on boys, Tampa was inspired by the case of Debra Lafave, the Florida teacher who was convicted of having sex with a pupil in 2005 "There are rules for female sexuality and there are ways that you're allowed to be extreme and it's in a very submissive, romantic way," says Nutting, on the phone from Florida. "It's not to say anyone should be comfortable with my book, but I think that's why the shock at this book is so great, because female sexual agency in general is not fully accepted."
Nutting was at school with Lafave. With previous similar cases, she says, "I felt that it wasn't as predatory somehow, or not as severe a crime when a woman commits it." With Lafave, she watched and read the coverage closely. "That was when I began to call myself out on my own double standard. That gave me an ear out for cases like it, so suddenly every time one of these cases came up – and they come up a lot – I saw that phenomenon was not contained to her case."
Nutting says that many people don't see the young men in these cases as victims: "There is this absolute belief a lot of people have which is, 'He wanted it, how could it be a crime?' Which I think is very faulty logic."
The sex scenes in Tampa are explicit and unflinching. One scene involves Celeste instigating anal sex on the classroom desktop and throughout she thinks of little else but pubescent penises. Was that necessary? "I knew that if I was going to write this I was going to refuse to euphemise, I was not going to hide behind language," says Nutting.
She believes that the reporting on or talk around real-life cases often diminishes the serious nature of what's happened. "Instead of talking about what she did, we talk about theories as to why she did it, or reasoning that she is not fully responsible for her behaviour. Or that the boy is 'lucky'". "Here," she says to readers. "Read it in extreme graphic detail and see if you still feel that way."
Nutting was at school with Lafave. With previous similar cases, she says, "I felt that it wasn't as predatory somehow, or not as severe a crime when a woman commits it." With Lafave, she watched and read the coverage closely. "That was when I began to call myself out on my own double standard. That gave me an ear out for cases like it, so suddenly every time one of these cases came up – and they come up a lot – I saw that phenomenon was not contained to her case."
Nutting says that many people don't see the young men in these cases as victims: "There is this absolute belief a lot of people have which is, 'He wanted it, how could it be a crime?' Which I think is very faulty logic."
The sex scenes in Tampa are explicit and unflinching. One scene involves Celeste instigating anal sex on the classroom desktop and throughout she thinks of little else but pubescent penises. Was that necessary? "I knew that if I was going to write this I was going to refuse to euphemise, I was not going to hide behind language," says Nutting.
She believes that the reporting on or talk around real-life cases often diminishes the serious nature of what's happened. "Instead of talking about what she did, we talk about theories as to why she did it, or reasoning that she is not fully responsible for her behaviour. Or that the boy is 'lucky'". "Here," she says to readers. "Read it in extreme graphic detail and see if you still feel that way."
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