Innocents

A young novelist “turns Nabokov on his head in this tale of an Aussie Lolita who sets her sights on a witless teacher . . . enthralling and ultimately sobering” (Kirkus Reviews).

Written when Cathy Coote was nineteen, Innocents draws readers into the anatomy of an adolescent obsession. We all know that manipulating someone naïve and vulnerable into a sexual relationship to satisfy a twisted desire is wrong—even evil. 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. 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. Unforgettable, disturbing, and morally complex, Innocents permanently unsettles our notions of innocence, experience, and power.

“Coote is a natural, wryly dissecting the workings of human desire.” —The New York Times Book Review