AustLit

'He’s a good man; he just has bad habits. Or are they even bad to begin with? Perhaps society just has its definitions all wrong. She doesn’t like to make assumptions. She’s exactly what he needs, but she can’t go on being that forever. Where exactly is the line between good and bad, and who draws those lines, to begin with? After the school bell has rung and the class dismissed, two nameless faces: an older man for whom teaching English is a passion and a young woman wearing her school uniform neatly pressed, find themselves in his flat. It’s the first time she’s been there, and she’s the first girl from school he’s ever invited. So he says. She’s a clever girl who reads Marquez and seems to know all the right things to say to him. She’s his idea of physical perfection, and he happens to have her undivided attention. As her company inspires his confidence, and he blankets himself in his own self-righteous revelry, his hold over the right and the wrong of it loosens, and his temper flares. The man and the girl are plunged into a game of cat and mouse, where the weapon is manipulation and the only way for it to end is for one to consume the other.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.