Taming the Beast
Emily Maguire
Harper Perennial (2006)
This ‘provocative gem’ of a book left me feeling like I needed to drink a big glass of milk and eat some Girl Scout cookies. I wanted to do something extra wholesome to shake that sense of a childhood lost to sex addiction, devoid of lollipops, girlie slumber-parties and Hello Kitty jammies. Taming the Beast’s main character Sarah trades in her tweenie years for a life of perversion brought on by Mr. Carr, her English teacher who lures her into a sexual relationship with literature and romantic notions. Considering that I am a sucker for an affair with literary undertones, I like this in a book.
In her debut novel, Emily Maguire explores with dexterity and sensitivity the nuanced mind of a literate, masochistic nympho. The physical aspects of Sarah pop to life. As a reader, I get a vivid picture of an over-sexed pixie that looks disturbingly like the pictures your little sister posts on her MySpace Page, pictures that you drink heavily to erase from memory. She has this disarming innocence that seems to bring out the pervert in men, once they realize she is, in fact, up for that sexual tryst they thought was just wishful thinking. This is simultaneously erotic and a little bit sad.
***CAUTION, SPOILERS AHEAD****
Through Sarah's mess of a life, Maguire effectively depicts the dystopia of misguided romanticism, as well as heartbreaking double whammy of sexual obsession and a malformed sense of self. Sarah replaces real physical and emotional intimacy wholesale with loveless sexual couplings. And just when she is in danger of having a relationship with any real depth, Carr reappears in her life.
What this aging, pedophilic stalker has to offer Sarah is ultimate, exclusive intimacy in one respect; isolation and abuse in another. Carr cuts her off from her friends (almost all of whom are male and known to her in the biblical sense). She becomes a furtively kept woman, playing into Carr’s self-loathing by appealing to what he considers his weaknesses. The two mutually obsessed sex maniacs tear each other limb from limb and seem to forget that there is a life outside the bedroom. Carr is overbearing, controlling and abusive, locking her into a yearlong 24/7 S&M scene with threats of suicide if she were to want out. Sarah claims she likes it, comparing their love to spiking a heroin needle into her vein. It is this intense destructiveness that shows just why relationships based in amour fou (crazy love) are usually self limiting.
Maguire overreaches slightly with her literary references, leaving the supposed intellectual natures of the main characters a little bit flat. I think this has to do with her straightforward writing style which, in other respects, I find necessary to keep the prose from turning florid and purple. The most effective literary moment occurs when Sarah is masturbating to a strange, aquatic fantasy which repulses Carr and encourages him to leave a poem tacked to her door. I find the repeated use of the ‘beast with two backs’ line from Shakespeare a little desensitizing. What was alluring and effective when she mentioned it the first time, became passé on the 27th.
Overall, I enjoyed the darkly romantic eroticism of the book and it left me with some food for thought.
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