11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You won't put it down, October 19, 2006
This review is from: Taming the Beast: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)
This book explores very difficult topics such as pedophilia, rape, and sadomasichism. It is extremely well-written with a very believable plot. As its plot unfolded, I became unnerved with myself for not being more disturbed by the book. It was as if Sarah Clark somehow seduced me, as a reader, into her world, desires, and afflictions. I would not recommend this book to people who cannot handle discussing the aforementioned topics in a very real way. Nothing is sugar-coated in this book, but if you can handle it, it delivers an amazing exploration of a woman's exploited sexuality.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best books I've read all year, December 24, 2006
This review is from: Taming the Beast: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)
At the age of 14, Sarah Clarke is seduced by her 38-year-old English professor. Precocious beyond her years, Sarah uses her love of literature to bind him to her and is sure that they'll be together forever. Theirs is a torrid love affair filled with violent couplings, staggering emotion and unfathomable passion. Or so it seems in Sarah's adolescent mind. When their affair ends in an abrupt, jarring fashion Sarah is left adrift wondering how to put back together the pieces of her previously uncomplicated life.
Instead she learns to use sex as a weapon and sleeps with anyone and everyone in an attempt to find the consuming passion she felt with Mr. Carr. For seven years she has indiscriminate sex, lives in squalor, and strings along any of the many men who would try to put her back together again. Then Mr. Carr reenters her life and things go from bad to worse. The consuming passion that she felt might overwhelm her at 14 is still as engulfing at 21. Even as she tries to recapture the what she felt for him as a child, she realizes that their lives have changed so much that they can't really go back to where they started. The only thing left between them is this fiery emotion that threatens to burn not only them, but anyone who threatens to come between them...
This book was engaging, enthralling, and all-around unforgettable. I found myself unable to put it down and read it in one sitting. Sarah is the kind of flawed hero that you can't help but enjoy and admire even as you watch them self-destruct. Elements of so much classic literature shape this character as evidenced by Sarah's obsession with Jane Eyre, ability to quote Shakespeare at length, and the fact that she uses poetry as a tool for seduction. At times I pitied her, throwing her body away and using sex as a means to feel something--anything; but occasionally she would show someone a side of herself, that there was something there besides the vapid, shallow, self-absorbed slut that everyone thought she was, and those moments made this book entirely worthwhile. I LOVED the characters, loved the writing, loved the book. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Maggie Gyllenhaal's flawed heroine in the movie Secretary or those who can look pass the sex and get into the story.
The Sydney Morning Herald has said about the author, "Emily Maguire embodies the great romantic myth of the writer who emerges from nowhere, fully formed." I'll second that. I found this book buried away in the back of the library and picked it up because the caption said it was reminiscent of Lolita. It was, and I know for a fact that I will run, not walk, out to buy it for myself. It's that good.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Attempted to tackle difficult themes, and unfortunately...failed., July 4, 2010
This review is from: Taming the Beast: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)
Being a lover of 'Lolita' by Nabokov - for countless reasons, not just Nabokov's heartbreaking soaring poetic prose or the love-hate relationships you have with his characters, I am constantly hunting for books with similar themes/relationships/characters/patterns. They're more rare than you would imagine. Lolita, being as popular and historic as it is, stands more or less alone in the literary world.
Relationships between underage females and older males are hardly covered in literature. So when I stumbled upon 'Taming the Beast' on Amazon - I was EXTREMELY excited. I purchased the book after reading a lot of five-star reviews and was highly anticipating its arrival. When it finally came, I tore through it in a day or so. I was expecting an "Australian Lolita" but what the book ended up being was a sick, torrid, sensational novel of drugs and promiscuity. Except for a chapter or so at the beginning of the novel there was hardly any connection to the May/December romance theme at all.
Sarah Clark is a 14 year old Australian school girl who's mad about Jane Eyre, Shakespeare, and all the other classics. Aside from quoting a few literary passages now and again to prove some sexual point, the only discussion of classic literature is done in a remarkably immature and inaccessible manner. Discussing Emma Bovary in 'Madame Bovary' - Sarah says, "Her husband's such a plodder, so she falls for the first guy who offers her a bit of excitement and he turns out to be a pig and the next guy is this awful coward and it just seems the more she searches, the worse things get for her." I'm not saying that all 14 year old girls should talk with the remarkably poetic prose of Cathy Coote's heroine in 'Innocents', but Sarah Clark seems to be a remarkably short-sighted and non-poetic little thing. She's painted as this precociously intelligent creature who somehow manages to capture the attention of a man much older than her not JUST because of her looks, but also because of her brain. Whenever she opens her mouth to speak about something other than sex, however, the reader is left sorely disappointed.
Her affair is with her 38 year old English professor. For the first 44 out of 317 pages, they have a mad clawing passionate connection. And in those 44 pages the book tries to deal with both the "illicit" nature of their age-gap and some BDSM themes. But it does both badly. It glosses over the difficulty of the age-gap, leaving us wondering what both of the characters are thinking. We are given absolutely no look into their heads, other than a few panting gasps at Sarah's feelings for this man we barely know. They start the BDSM references early and with no explanation. The first time something 'sadistic' takes place between them it is obviously meant to shock and thus provoke a reaction, but even as a reader who is usually comfortable with 'sick' and 'perverse' material (I don't even blink at 'Lolita' any longer. I loved the depth and complexity of 'A Clockwork Orange'. 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' is fabulous and classic, and portrays a disturbing subject matter in a wonderfully accessible way.), 'Taming The Beast' made me ill. I wanted to throw the book out the window over and over and over again, and only stuck with it because I've never once not finished a book, and I didn't want to start now.
I tried so hard to develop the kind of love/hate relationship with the Sarah, Mr. Carr, or the woefully pathetic Jamie that I have with Lolita and Humbert, but it was just impossible. The characters tried to make us understand why their irrational, cruel, and disgusting behavior was worthy of anything other than hate, but despite their best efforts, their meaning never came through to me. They never fleshed out to be anything more than mere shadows. I went through the whole novel turning every page, expecting some major turn-around or transition that would turn this book from a 1 star into a 5 star, only to be disappointed again and again.
All in all, I think the book attempted to do something great. It tried to take on some very difficult and mature themes that NEED to be tackled more in literature. It tried to make them accessible to a younger audience by using a main character of a young age. But instead of handling those themes with finesse, the book just left me confused, sickened, and more than a little hurt. 'Taming the Beast' tried to be serious and respectable at the same time that it tried to titillate and shock its readers. And in the end, it was nothing more for me than a headache and a waste of time.
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