![]() Cootes debut (written when she was 19) details a twisted love affair between a teenage student and teacher from the nymphets point of view. Was Lolita utterly cunning and "Humbert the innocent" seduced? In Australian writer Cootes provocative variation on a theme tackled many times before, the answer is a disturbing and (nearly) unequivocal yes. ![]() ![]() "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. ![]() Unforgettable, disturbing, and morally complex, Innocents permanently unsettles our notions of innocence, experience, and power, and suggests that we all are culpable. She leaves the aunt and uncle who are her guardians and moves in with her teacher together, they quickly embark on a journey into their darkest desires. But when the perpetrator is a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, is she culpable? And if the victim is her thirty-four-year-old teacher, shouldn't he have known better? When the nameless young narrator of Innocents decides to seduce her teacher, she immediately realizes that the power of her sexuality is greater than she ever imagined. Forcing someone vulnerable and naive into a sexual relationship to satisfy a twisted desire is perverted, even evil. Written when Cathy Coote was nineteen, Innocents is a taut, wickedly clever descent into the anatomy of an obsession, the debut of a precociously assured and provocative young literary voice. ![]()
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