Taming the Beast: Emily Maguire

"Taming the Beast"

Finished in 2007
I've had this one for a while so I don't remember now why I bought it. It's a novel about a young woman who tries to recapture the feelings that she had with her first lover (who was also her school English teacher when she was fourteen - the beast in the title is Shakespeare's one with two backs) after he leaves her suddenly.

With all its descriptions of sordid sexual encounters and emotional betrayals and misunderstandings, it's quite grim in places, and I feared for the two central characters (the woman and her lover, finally reunited after the books ends) who are completely out of control when they're with each other. Thinking about it now I'm reminded a little of Jenny Diski's Nothing Natural, which is also about a destructive relationship and which I read I think in 2004. But in Diski's book I think that the woman finally takes control of the relationship, whereas in "Taming the Beast" I suspect that the couple destroy each other shortly after the final page.