Tampering

Continuing the theme from the interview last week, here's the clever and similarly themed cover for Alissa Nutting's Tampa, about a female teacher with a ravenous sexual appetitie for under-aged boys. The design is by Gray318 (more of his work in these posts).

The book itself is not a total success. The publishers on both sides of the Atlantic (Faber for the cover above) make the inevitable comparisons to Lolita. But we don't read Lolita because it's about a paedophile (or at least I hope we don't), we read it because it's a masterpiece of literary style and wit. Tampa, which I would be amazed to learn wasn't based on the case of the female paedophile teacher who was ludicrously deemed "too pretty to go to prison", doesn't have the same brilliance (though to be fair, what does?)--instead it's a claustrophic, monomaniacal book, entirely focused on the narrator's exploitation and plans for the exploitation of young male flesh. In the end, what's the point of it? To teach us that sexual predators are vile people? I already knew that.