Product Description

Sarah Clark's life is irrevocably changed at the age of fourteen when her English teacher, Mr Carr, seduces her after class. Their affair is illegal, erotic, passionate and dangerous - a vicious meeting of minds and bodies. But when Mr Carr's wife discovers the affair he has to choose between them and moves to another city with his family. Sarah is devastated and from that day on her life is defined by a series of meaningless, self-abasing sexual encounters, hoping with each man that she will experience the same delicious feelings she had with Mr Carr. Seven years later Daniel Carr walks back into Sarah's life and she is drawn once again into the destructive relationship. Is Sarah strong enough to 'tame the beast'?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7812 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"'A hard-hitting debut about modern adolescence' The List 'The Australian novelist eschews the obvious child abuse narrative for a more complex look at the nature of violence and sex in this emotional rollercoaster' Herald 'A thought-provoking and searing first novel' The Age 'Far too well-written to be discarded as shock-smut' Arena 'By the end of Taming the Beast - through which I forgot to eat - I felt terrified, feverish, and green at the gills. And utterly awed' Big Issue in the North"

Independent, December 2, 2005
I was very impressed by Taming the Beast Maguire heads into extraordinarily dark psychosexual territory, withholding any easy answers

Observer Magazine, March 5 2006
'It’s a bleak, uneasy book, albeit powerfully written. It is also shockingly compelling’

Customer Reviews

Surprising, thought-provoking, disturbing and beautiful
The back-of-book blurb for this compares it to Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal, but the only similarity is the basic theme of a relationship between a teacher and student. In every other way, this Australian novel could not be more different.

Sarah Clark is a 14 year-old student seduced by her English teacher, the vile yet oddly appealing Mr Carr. Sado-masochistic sex follows before teacher takes off leaving Sarah to spin out of control for the rest of her teen years. Just when you think this is another abused-child-turned-bad book things take a suprising twist when the adult Sarah initates a relationship with her former teacher. What follows is the darkest, most painful portrayal of an obsessive relationship I have ever read.

Taming the Beast is a little bit Lolita and a little bit The Great Gatsby with huge servings of the Marquis de Sade all mixed into a gripping, heartbreaking story written in a fresh, original voice. If you're squeamish about graphic sex you'll have a hard time, but otherwise I recommend it to anyone interested in literature, love and female sexuality and power.

Appropriately, nothing concise comes to mind
This book is so hard to categorize, insofar as it deals with lots of issues. It starts off as a teen fantasy, when a 14yr old girl is relatively graphically seduced by her teacher in the classroom; it then turns into a slightly contrived beautiful-but-messed-up-and-all-the-more-attractive-for-it novel where the same girl, now a poor student/waitress living in a bedist, literally has sex with anyone who looks her way - including boyfriends of friends and her own best friend.

She's almost your typical beautiful waif, very slightly built, with the mettle of someone who's had your had-knocks education, and is just aching to be rescued by a big handsome stranger.

It's actually a testament to the skill of the author that you don't abjectly despise her, and as her life, and behaviour, spiral even further, you get a sense that this might not be your typical novel.
When our heroine bumps into her former teacher, the book sharply veers away from its predicted "Hollywood" path.

What follows is a shocking, insightful and painful look at what a truly dysfunctional, mutually abusive relationship can be when both people involved fundamentally loathe themselves.
With the loss of a major character, it could have become twee, but that person's disintergration is so beautifully written, it'll make you catch your breath for a second.

If you want hardcore sex, this isn't the book for you, because you'll have to go through many pages of beautifully written novel to get to the "good bits" (having said that, Ms Maguire really doesn't hold back when it comes to it); but if you want something that'll initially give you a slight tingle, then veer off into something that takes the breath from you and makes you cry, you'll enjoy this book very much.

Love, lust, sex & obssession down under
I found Maguire's debut an intense and often disturbing tale about lust, love, obessession and the desparate measures people will go to, to be loved and get love. This certainly is not a novel for the faint-hearted, nor those who object to graphic sex scenes, of which there are many.
At first I thought it was going to be a tale about how love can conquer all but in the second half of the novel, when our heroine, or should I say anti-heroine meets up with her former teacher, the novel takes a dark turn and towards the end I wondered what kind of message the author was trying to give me.
Can you love too much? Are some people naturally destructive, even to those they claim to love?
If you like uncompromising novels that show the world in all its (often cruel) glory, a tell-it-like-it-is writing style, you're not adverse to graphic sex and you want to be challenged emotionally, then you should definitely read Taming The Beast.