i'm not going to rate this book. I am, however, going to talk about it.If you're looking for a teacher-student romance , I personally don't think this fits the bill. I wouldn't call the disturbing relationship that this 38 year old married man with children started with his 14 year old clueless English student romantic. In fact, romantic would be the last word I would use to describe this book. When I got to the second page and the story went right into their first sexual encounter I thought, "Well, that's one way to start an affair." It simply came out of left field. You see, I was still thinking that I was going to read a romance story. I had absolutely no idea that this was a story about abuse (both physical and emotional) and the consequences that this 38 year old man left for this poor girl to deal with when he left her. At one point as I was reading one of the million sexscapades this girl has (if you don't think highly of your neighborhood slut, good luck reading this one). I haven't felt so conflicted in my feelings about a heroine in a very long time. Sarah was a classless (I had no issues with this) selfish (huge issue with this) whore (no issue with this). The selfish bit was what had me shaking me head and thinking, "Why am I still reading?...oh, that's right, my morbid curiosity strikes again." She sleeps with anything that can get their dick up, and that's fine. I think by the end of it I understood why she did this, but at that point I didn't care. When I got to 70% I thought, "Okay, the plot thickens, maybe something will happen now?..." I'm about to go into full blown spoiler mode now, so if you do not like spoilers do not read. (view spoiler)[ What bothered me the most is that her old teacher comes back 8 years later. Eight years later he comes into her life waving divorce papers, showing her photos of how happy his family used to be so that she can see what "he left for her". Give me a mother fucking break, you sick twisted bastard with wrinkly balls. He does this AFTER he physically abuses her the second day of seeing her, giving her such deep bite marks that her thighs are left bleeding, and throws her on the side of the road. Completely discards her like yesterday's trash. He constantly, CONSTANTLY belittles her. Constantly tells her how ugly she is, how worthless she is. I had a huge issue with this. HUGE FUCKING ISSUE with this. To me, that's worse than the physical abuse. I don't do well with emotional abuse but I thought it was there for a reason so I kept reading. Needless to say, I was, at that point, reading a fucking trainwreck. I was just waiting for somebody to get ran over and left for dead. Well, when it happens, it happens to the person I least thought should be dead. As it usually does. And Sarah made a comment that made me think the same. She had been fucking her best friend Jamie for a while, had fallen in love with him but was too afraid to admit that to him. She was afraid that he would leave his wife and baby to be with her because she was so emotionally closed off that she couldn't fathom having someone truly 100% putting her first (even though she knew Jamie always put her first). Well, very very late into the book, a couple of pages before it ends, Jamie commits suicide after Sarah goes to see him. She had been living with her old teacher for a year then and looked like a skeleton, with bones comes out everywhere. The teacher admits that he did take advantage of her by seducing her when she was 14. That he knew she would let him because he had met her mother at a school open house and her mother was cold and heartless and he knew that any slight touch would make Sarah crumble at his feet. He was obsessed with her, but not because he was in love with her. He was obsessed with controlling her. So her best friend Jamie kills himself and Sarah goes back home to her ex-teacher/live in boyfriend who makes her quit her job so that he can have full access to her and beat her and rapes her after he drugs her (though it's not rape bc she willingly gives herself to him anyway, even after she comes off of her high and sees she's full of gashes and bloodied). And when she goes back to him, she finds him in a state that makes her think he's dead. He's not, but she thinks he is (this is just after she attended Jamie's funeral) and that's when she "realizes that she could live without him, despite previously thinking she couldn't." So in the end she has hope for herself. She's practically dying, only holding on by a string because she's that underfed and beat up. Yet, 100% into the book she finally has hope. After the man who was in love with her his entire life committed suicide because of her. I don't even know how to feel about that, to be honest. (hide spoiler)]
This book disgusted me, disturbed me and intrigued me. Yet, I am not sure exactly how I feel about it. Both Sarah and Mr. Carr are seriously disturbed people- almost to where someone might say they deserve each other. Scenes where go into all the things they do to one another during sex: burning each other with cigs, biting until they bleed, bruises on their face and Sarah even breaks his fingers without knowing it. The seem to fall into a pit of hedonistic pleasure, but it isn't sexy at all. They don't eat, neglect their lives and Mr. Carr leaves his family and loses his job because he can't shake of Sarah. Sarah's no better because she becomes a sex slave for Carr allowing him to choke her until she blacks out. This girl wakes up two days later in the kitchen not know what happened. That's not love.In all frankness their relationship is how I see couples like Bella/Edward or Patch/Nora. That sick obsessed need that isn't really love, but fools you into thinking it is. It consumes you until everything, even violence comes off as an expression of "love." Mr. Carr might be a perverted old man, but his stalking and manipulation are really no different from many of the YA romantic male leads. That is the most terrifying thing. This reminds me of why I find love terrifying at times. There are some weakness: mainly not really deep characterization in terms of Sarah. Just because she can quote a lot of sonnets does not make her a smart character. In the eight years between the first break up with Carr and them meeting up again, she just does down a spiral. Now there is nothing wrong with having sex with whoever and how many people you want in my humble opinion, but you have to have class about it. Don't have sex by garbage cans or stuff like that. It's an STI/D waiting to happen. She's put as such a woobie.Also Jamie's character was equally infuriating because he was a bad/yet good guy wrapped in one. He cheats on the mother of his child, but you get why because he never wanted to be with her in the first place. You want to hug him, but bitch slap him all at once.The other girls in this book are just poorly conceived foils for Sarah's character. In this day and age a girl who is deluded to think that her boyfriend will not masturbate is an idiot. Jamie's girlfriend even has this whole tirade about how Sarah turned Mr. Carr into a pervert (a line used by Sarah's own sister) and every girl is just baby crazy and marriage obsessed.On the back cover this book is compared to Lolita and I call horse shit on that. This is nothing like Lolita, it lacks the charm, elegance of language and the moral intrigue. Books like this are based on Lolita's concepts, but don't understand what made it such an engrossing piece.For a better more in depth review please go read Kat's review. It is fabulous:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...4/5
What do You think about Taming The Beast (2006)?
No rating “When two people were completely bound in the expression of love, they ceased to be separate individuals and become one creature. The act of passion, when properly performed, created an organism larger than the sum of its parts; it created a beast with two backs, but one soul.”If I had the chance to rewind time, I would’ve chosen to not read this book – it’s too poisonous and in general, too much. I’m all for dark reads – the darker the better – but this is the kind of book that leaves a permanent impression on your mind and has the capacity to stain souls and mess with your psyche. It’s impossible to escape unscathed from the emotional damage and mindfuck. If you are looking for a student/teacher read, I suggest you look elsewhere. This book is dark, disgusting, and demented and the end result from reading is not rewarding or fulfilling. While the writing was magnificent, I hated the story, hated all the characters, hated the choices they made and ultimately, I hate myself for reading this book. P.S. I know this review is way shorter than my usual ones but all you need to know about the plot is what the blurb tells you. In all honesty, I would NOT recommend this book to anyone. There is some beauty and hope to be found within this story, but the ugliness completely overshadows it.
—Lady Vigilante (Feifei)
My mom used to say......preferably after I had done something irresponsible, like inviting myself into the home of that middle-aged man, who was living alone down the road, just to pet his German shepherd. of course I'd always lose my sense of time and end up getting home after dark. Where I would find my mother in a state, going on about what COULD have happened and that I wasn’t allowed to visit 'That Man' anymore and that she would pay him a visit first thing in the morning to find out why he would invite a 12-year old girl into his house. And that girls my age supposedly knew it all, but anything crazy I could imagine - and mostly couldn’t! - actually existed in this world. To bottom-line it: I had to be more careful. Of course I thought that was a stoopid and belittling thing to say, so I often just shrugged.But while reading Taming the Beast, the thought of how it, indeed, could have played out chilled me. And up to a certain point I only knew too well how the troubled heroine in this book, Sarah, must have felt. I know how obsessions can hit you hard at that age, how you can cling to them so desperately and melodramatically. And how 8 years later, the echo of those emotions can still be intense. OhSarahohSarahohoh...I wish someone would've stolen her away from Mr. Carr, made her hot chocolate and hid her somewhere far away from parents and predators."But also", Mr. Carr said. "You could look at it the way I do. If your mother hadn't been so distant and unloving, maybe you wouldn't have been such an easy fuck." I cannot say that I'm shocked that her teacher seized the opportunity. That's the reality of the world we live in. The fact that he wounded and ravaged her when they resumed their relationship years later slightly nauseated me, but hey, different people, different tastes. And what can you do when two adults are in a destructive relationship? That's their choice. And wasn't he her victim as much as she his? That doesn't mean that I didn't find it hard to grasp Mr. Carr's attempts at (view spoiler)[isolating her and breaking her down deliberately (hide spoiler)]
—Loederkoningin
(view spoiler)[Hahaha jesi okrutna :D A sta ce jadan. Ah nju je Daniel unistio...Eh bas mi je drago da ti se svidjela!:) (hide spoiler)]
—*P*u*r*p*l*e* Masochist
