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Reviews of TAMING THE BEAST


  • "[S]ections of the book pulse with sexual energy…Maguire keeps the prose crackling and the dialogue lively from the first page to the last." Publishers Weekly

  • "Obsession, delusion, abandonment and perversion are never easy to portray, but Emily Maguire has managed to wrestle the beast to the ground and, if she has not tamed it, then she has given us some insights into both its beauty and its terror." Kathleen Mitchell Award 2006 Commendation

  • "The swift narrative carries us without pit stops for frills or flowers; the acute prose is piercing and direct." KGB Bar Lit

  • "...powerful and compelling..." Kirkus Reviews
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Also by Emily Maguire

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Arena UK Review

October 2005

Emily Maguire's debut is a coming-of-age novel, and then some. By page three her 14-year-old heroine, Sarah, is having sex with her English teacher. What follows is a life defined by self-abasing, violent couplings, as Sarah tries to recreate what she had with the disciplinarian. Eventually, teach comes back bringing more abuse and more sex - in short, this might not be the novel to recommend to your primmer friends. But it's far too well-written to be discarded as shock smut.