“ Innocents is undeniably the work of a precocious talent. “Cathy Coote has delivered a novel of outstanding emotional complexity.” –Bronwyn Simpson, Manly Daily (Manly, New South Wales) A clever page turner.” –Susan Taylor, Central Western Daily (Orange, New South Wales) “Written as a letter to a lover by a sixteen-year-old Catholic schoolgirl, the tale recounts the realization of female sexual power and its potency on the male of the species. “The rejection of sentimentality and the carefully calibrated knowingness make this more than just another Nabokov knockoff, and mark Coote as a young writer to watch.” – Publishers Weekly deserves acclaim not just for the narrator’s remarkably compelling voice but for so ruthlessly limning her deepening psychosis.” – Kirkus Reviews Tar-black comedy and psychosexual gamesmanship–both make for an enthralling and ultimately sobering debut”.
“Coote turns Nabokov on his head in this tale of an Aussie Lolita. “ is open to different interpretations one could see it as a siple indictment of the duplicitous ways of women, but it oculd equally be read as a feminist condemnation of the social construction of female sexuality and the warped identities available for women.” –Christian Perring, Metapsychology “ titillating odyssey of arrant manipulation.” –Daphne Uviller, Time Out New York ” –Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Entertainment Weekly 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 na’ve 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. A brilliant debut.” (Meg Stewart, The Bulletin) explodes the myth of youthful innocence: those who use sexual power to manipulate relationships are never entirely innocent. “Compelling stuff, sexy and disturbingly frank.
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