Thoughts about Tampa , by Alissa Nutting This novel's anti-protagonist narrator, Celeste, is so focused on her own sexual needs, which can be filled only by having sex with unformed adolescent boys, that other elements of what we might consider essential to life, love, friendship, civic duty, and intellectual stimulation, are absent from her consciousness. But what's brilliant about Alissa Nutting's work is that Celeste's story of putting all her effort into seduction and domination is really an indictment of our culture's similar effort to sexualize and dehumanize itself. Tampa the city has little or nothing to do with the story; it could have happened in any sterile suburb in any part of the country. By setting it in a generic city, Celeste's perverse and cruel acts point right back at us and our larger culture. Like so much covered in the media, Celeste is so glib, so oblivious, so immune to guilt that even though she admits she has "broken...