How many times do you find yourself committing a “thought crime”? An illegal act that happens within the confines of your head? This abstract thought was something I had flopping around in my head for a good part of the week while reading the book TAMPA by Alissa Nutting.
This book was kinda recommended to me by way of my hairstylist Jenn. She’s one of the few people I interact with that voraciously reads and recently told me about a Facebook-book-club that actively reads Thriller/Head Warping books. The book that everyone in her club was talking about a young woman/teacher that is on the hunt to groom a 14 year old boy.
Jenn didn’t know much about the book but was curious to see why it caused the feeling of shock & awe amongst her book club friends. At the time, I was in the process of reading a book called Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler and found myself wanting to abort the read completely. I snapped a photo of the TAMPA book and mentally kept a note to myself to revisit after reading some other books I had earmarked around the house.
“Actively” reading in 2025 wasn’t something I intended to increase or do, but it’s been an outlet of sorts as I tackle the chore of journaling. It’s a healthy escape from a lot of the noise that is going around me in work and life. I said in passing that I’m “quiet quitting life” and sticking my head in a book. Anyhoo, after reading a pair of Chuck Klosterman books, I felt the need to immerse myself into a fictional novel.
Let me start out by saying that TAMPA is a book the reads and feels like a number of other books I’ve read in the past but it roots itself in the active act of statutory rape. When the book starts there’s a character by the name of Celeste Price, who is unhappily married to a police officer. She decides to become an English teacher and admits to secretly being a hebephile. By inserting herself into a setting with pubescent children, the book begins to painfully explore a multitude of thought crimes. I say that because the Celeste thinks long and hard about whom to select for grooming. For a little while, she seemed to dismiss many of the students. The mental acts she envisioned and physical acts she does onto herself in the classroom were so extreme that I thought the book was going to be an exercise in committing thought crimes.
Thats not at all what happens. She finds a student and begins to groom them. Celeste is very aware of what she’s doing and I recall her admitting to having an unhealthy hunger that cant be tamed. The last third of the book resolves itself a little quickly and in my opinion a little awkwardly. More awkwardly is reading something like this and having to be careful discussing it. One person I know, went out of their way to confirm that this wasn’t a genre of literature that I enjoyed reading. I assuredly said “No.”
In my head this little novel was like listening to a record with heavy SATANIC overtures when I lived with my parents. Not entirely sure why that helped me get thru the reading but that’s kinda what it felt like. It felt like I was holding onto something that I shouldn’t have for a fleeting moment of time. Ave Satanas.
