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 YEAR AN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR“Impossible to put down.” —NPR“A novel that readers … YEAR
A 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 King
A 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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Contains insest. I wish I could get my money back!
Brutal and painful, but well worth reading.
Disturbing
Upsetting
I can’t rate this book. I kept reading it but it was really kind of a horror book. I hope it wasn’t realistic.
This book is unlike anything I have read before….chilling….haunting…character development is outstanding. Warning….it’s not for everyone. I had to put the book down a couple of times because of the graphic brutality. I have to say though, the author handled it brilliantly. Exceptionally well written. Can’t wait to see what follows.
I enjoyed most of the storyline, but it was much too wordy. The first 50% of the book I had to skim thru to get to the plot. Had it not been recommended by a favorite author of mine, I would not have bothered. I felt the author was trying way to hard to impress the reader with his vocabulary, and instead caus d me to skip over the majority of it.
Difficult book to read. Violent and brutal father from whom the main character struggles to detach. Macabre details that make this novel truly a horror story. It’s gritty and frustrating to watch the teen struggle to free herself, but the reader has to persist because one wants the girl to survive.
This is such a terrible story. It is just sickening to know that relationships like this actually exist in our society.
The male author did a good job of telling the story thru the eyes of a 13 year old girl. I found the story believable and scary for that very reason. I was riveted near the end and had to put everything on hold until I finished.
Most horrible best book I have ever read. The story line is awful and the young girl is amazing. Compelling read. I could not put it down.
Did not care for it.
Wonderful writing kept me turning pages through very violent events in the life of an adolescent girl. Turtle is a compelling character, made believable and sympathetic in spite of all her contradictions and a few “over the top” exploits. Likewise her complex and cruel father is also given depth. Their back story is slowly revealed.
The descriptions of coastal Northern California are where beautiful writing shines.
I really did not like it.
The mixed or negative reviews of this book by some readers make me question where we’re going wrong in understanding and appreciating exceptional contemporary literature. Fortunately this amazing author’s contribution appears to be almost universally lauded by authoritative critics in the US and UK. I’m not an authority on literature, or a literary critic. However, I do know what I know. My Absolute Darling presents, in my opinion, the best treatment I’ve ever read of the almost impossibly complex psychopathology of co-dependency that occurs as a function of long term incest, rape, and trauma. Completely separate from the writer’s relatively advanced clinical command of this issue, is his astonishing ability to wrap the reader in a deeply personal and empathetic relationship with the protagonist/victim that, for me, made it excruciating to close the book at the end of the evening. Finally, Tallent’s beautifully lyrical, almost hypnotic prose provided a dizzying juxtaposition of the sublime and the horrific, in nature, humanity, and life.
If you can tolerate a lot of mildly graphic child abuse, then My Absolute Darling is worth the emotional effort. Tallent is extremely skillful at building suspense and providing unique and clearly drawn main characters. I found myself cringing through every chapter with the tension that any moment some new bad thing could happen. There were aspects that I might have approached differently – it didn’t need to be quite so long to do the job, for example. Still, it’s an excellent example of a writer giving the characters a wide field in which to operate, understanding their complex and strong personalities and letting them act out the plot.
I found the book painfully engaging. I had trouble putting it down, despite the horror of what I was reading. Tallent has managed to connect on emotional levels with a raw subject of child abuse and create a triumphant story of survival ( or at least it leaves the reader feeling that Turtle, in time, will overcome most of the damage). I wish all such stories could suggest such a resolution of justice.
I don’t usually read and like this type of book because the characters and vocabulary were so tough and rude. I did like the writing and the originality and did, eventually, enjoy the book.
Awful raw language, horrid father and misguided, abused daughter. Did not think I would like this book but it was hard to put down once I got into it!
Did not see this book at all like more favorable reviewers.