My Absolute Darling
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.7
(430)
Gabriel Tallent
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALISTNBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALISTONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017ONE OF NPR’S ‘GREAT READS’ OF 2017A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEARAN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEARA BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR"Impossible to put down." —NPR"A novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.” —The Washington Post "The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." —Stephen KingA brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father.Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption. With Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, the reader watches, heart in throat, as this teenage girl struggles to become her own hero—and in the process, becomes ours as well.Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
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More Details:
Author
Gabriel Tallent
Pages
432
Publisher
Penguin
Published Date
2017-08-29
ISBN
0735211191 9780735211193
Ratings
Google: 5
Community ReviewsSee all
"Trigger warning on this one: extreme amounts of child abuse, manipulation and sexualization of a minor, abusive relationships, controlling relationships, gun violence. <br/><br/>Don’t read this if you’re recently out of trauma, but a cathartic and redemptive ending and an extremely true retelling of the victim mindset and relationship to your abuser.<br/><br/>As someone who has problematic relationship in my background, this was an extreme retelling of the ways control, terror and psychological cruelty changes a person into someone unrecognizable to themselves. It was extremely well done and lays out all the ways victims blame themselves and accept the situation as their fault.<br/><br/>I was originally off-put by Turtle’s obsession with guns, but the theme plays out as a need to control from the receiving end of a predatory relationship, and a love and care for anything in her path when she is not shown the same. <br/><br/>Martin is a true narcissistic abuser, and the author’s writing of how the town reacts to his outward persona rings true on many levels. <br/><br/>It took me awhile to get into, but once I acclaimed to the prose (beautiful run on sentences filled with natural language) this becomes one of those books that you will think about for a long time after.<br/><br/>Beautifully written account of natural world and knowledge from Turtle’s perspective, juxtaposing her intelligence against her lived experience. Yet also triggering and horrifically written, when the author gets deep into the physical accounts of sexual and physical abuse, all balanced with the perspective from the mind of a victim and all the ways the brain convinces one to stay quiet, that it all must be “my fault”.<br/><br/>The ending is a redemptive one. Heck yeah, Turtle."
"This is a pretty disturbing book. The beginning was hard to get through and the only reason I continued was because I was so concerned for this girl and wanted to see her get out of the situation so badly. I went into it thinking it was a coming of age love story with nature themes and didn’t anticipate the graphic abuse, so I guess just be prepared for what you’re getting into. "
K
Kacey