5/18/2023 0 Comments Cathy cooteBut this debauching of a decent one was more compelling than anything I had ever experienced." The girl's high-serious tone and overwrought language ("Oh how can I begin to show you the contours of my perversion? Your exploration destroyed these lands, darling"), while plausibly that of a teenager, becomes grating nonetheless, but Coote's brazen novel never falls into precocity or melodrama. "I had thought there could be no pleasure more exquisite than that of seducing a shy man. "I held all the aces-youth, beauty and cuteness." The narrator becomes increasingly calculating as she tangles him in her web of sexual manipulation. With newly awakened sexual powers, she casts a spell over her defenseless unnamed teacher. The narrator, raised competently, albeit coldly, by her aunt and uncle, maintains a wholesome facade, behind which lies a devious imagination and utterly jaded view of human relations. The story is written as a letter from the nameless, orphaned 16-year-old Catholic schoolgirl to her 34-year-old lover reviewing their affair and its consequences. Coote's debut (written when she was 19) details a twisted love affair between a teenage student and teacher from the nymphet's point of view. Was Lolita utterly cunning and Humbert Humbert the innocent seduced? In Australian writer Coote's provocative variation on a theme tackled many times before, the answer is a disturbing and (nearly) unequivocal yes.
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