There’s not much comfort offered in reading this novel. It’s a clear articulation of a teacher’s sexual exploitation of a middle school boy. The encounters are described in pretty stark terms, so there’s not a lot of room for interpretation or nuance.
Oh, but it’s written as a sexually liberating affair novel. So there’s that.
The obvious parallels for this novel are Notes on a Scandal in which a teacher sort of “finds” herself involved in a sexual relationship with boy at her school and tries to reckon with the confused set of events that led her to that place, alongside the older teacher who acts as an enabler and confidant.
The other parallel is obviously Lolita.
This novel is more Lolita than Notes on a Scandal. Celeste does not have to wonder how she got into this mess. She became a teacher to prey on middle school boys. She is only attracted to them, and no one else. Even her marriage to the drunken and always potentially violent cop husband is for his family money and cover.
But unlike Humbert Humbert, she doesn’t need us to believe her and trust in her as she tells us her story. Instead, Alissa Nutting is like Nabokov in making the audience complicit in the experience. She doesn’t work us up the final moments. We know all along, and we read on.
The novel also functions only because of a series of reversals. If we didn’t (culturally) ignore the vulnerable sexuality of boys, then this novel wouldn’t work. If we did glamorize high profile teacher abuse cases involving a female teacher and young male student (statistically rare compared to male-perpetrated abuse) and then excuse it as a “hot for teacher” kind of thing, then this novel wouldn’t work. And if the stupid literary market didn’t throw way too many young married woman who finds marriage ultimately empty and seeks outside attention (bad ones of these are being written right now!) then this novel wouldn’t work.
But it mostly does.
And you won’t like that it does.
(Photo by Aaron Mayes)
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