Author(s): Gabriel Tallent

Novel

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALISTN BCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF NPR'S 'GREAT READS' OF 2017 A 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 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.

Many debuts come with much fanfare - some of which creates deflation. My Absolute Darling is not one of those. Author Gabriel Tallent can write in the most lyrical way about the most horrific violence and abuse. Unsurprisingly, My Absolute Darling has been compared with A Little Life and The Sport of Kings. Set against the backdrop of the California coast, in Mendocino (where the author grew up), we meet fourteen-year-old Turtle (Julia) - tough, resourceful, able to handle a gun at six, able to survive in the wilderness with little or no equipment, watchful, lonely. Turtle lives with her father, Martin - her mother disappeared when she was very little. She struggles at school yet in her internal world she is intelligent - knowledgeable and philosophical. Her home life is controlled and confined by a set of predetermined rules and expectations laid down by her disturbed father: a father who believes that the apocalypse is upon them, a paranoid survivalist who insists he is training his daughter to exist against all odds, who loves his daughter more than anything. Tallent does not shy from the abuse which Turtle encounters, and his skill lies in the care with which he portrays the relationship between father and daughter and the beauty of his words. Martin and Turtle both have an understanding of nature, of the physical world around them, and this seems to hold them in some kind of warped isolation together. Julia has no friends at school, knows no other life. Her only other true relationship is with her grandfather, an war vet alcoholic who lives in a trailer on the family property. When Julia is with her grandfather you sense her relax. At all other times, Turtle is overly aware and on edge, expecting a poor outcome, ready to be at fault, ‘a useless slit’. This tension overlays the whole book, so even when things are going well in Turtle’s world you sense that this is the calm before the storm and that the storm will be mighty. The tension is so finely wrought that you find yourself torn between turning away and being compelled to stay with Turtle despite your unease. At the half point of the book, Turtle takes off on a trek cross-country (something she does from time to time to save herself from the constant trauma), to be alone. This time she comes across two boys just a little older than herself who are out adventuring, unwittingly unprepared for the elements and completely lost. Turtle follows them into the night and decides to rescue them, and so makes a departure in her life - real contact with others. This encounter becomes a pivotal point in the story: something changes in Turtle, something that Martin senses and feels threatened by. From this point, you understand that merely surviving will not be enough. Turtle will have to use her sharp and finely tuned instincts to decipher her truth and be tougher than she has ever been. And this is a tough, but an incredible, novel that reveals the internal world of damage and explores the psyche of Turtle humanely and honestly. With a remarkable character, a plot that keeps you wired, lyrical writing about relationships and nature, My Absolute Darling is compelling and unsettling.

{STELLA}