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My Absolute Darling

A Novel

ebook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST
NBCC 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.
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  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 26, 2017
      Room meets Rambo in this emotionally fraught first novel. Fourteen-year old Julia “Turtle” Alveston is growing up in Northern California, near Mendocino, under the overprotective eye of her abusive father, Martin, who, for all intents and purposes treats her like they live in a two-person survivalist camp—he teaches her how to shoot and hunt in the wild, and abuses and sexually molests her. Even though she goes to school, Turtle feels cut off from her fellow middle-school students until the day she meets Jacob, a high school student whose sudden appearance in her life forces her to question for the first time the way she’s being raised. Martin adds a new member to the family, which forces Turtle to make a bold move to keep his history of abuse from repeating itself, leading to a suspenseful and bloody climax at a teenage house party. In Turtle, Tallent has crafted a resourceful and resilient character. Unfortunately, Martin is such an obvious psycho creep that readers will wonder why the characters he interacts with—Turtle’s teachers, a friend from the old days—don’t see through him. Jacob, too, in the dialogue the author puts in his mouth, doesn’t sound like a real teenager. In the end, though, Turtle’s story is harrowingly visceral.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from June 15, 2017
      A 14-year-old girl struggles to escape her father's emotional and physical abuse in this harrowing debut.Turtle (born Julia) lives with her father, Martin, in the woods near the Mendocino coast. Their home is equipped like a separatist camp, and Martin opines officiously about climate change when he isn't training Turtle in gun skills or, at night, raping her. Unsurprisingly, Turtle is isolated, self-hating, and cruel to her classmates. She also possesses the kind of strength that suggests she could leave Martin if she had help, but her concerned teacher and grandfather are unsure what to do, and once Martin pulls her out of school and her grandfather dies, the point is moot. Can she get out? Tallent delays the answer to that question, of course, but before the climax he's written a fearless adventure tale that's as savvy about internal emotional storms as it is about wrangling with family and nature. Turtle gets a glimpse of a better life through Jacob, a classmate from a well-off family ("she feels brilliantly included within that province of things she wants"), and her efforts to save him in the woods earn his admiration. But when Martin brings another young girl home, Turtle can't leave for fear of history repeating. Tallent often stretches out visceral, violent scenes--Turtle forced to sustain a pull-up as Martin holds a knife beneath her, homebrew surgery, eating scorpions--to a point that is nearly sadistic. But he plainly means to explore how such moments seem to slow time, imprinting his young characters deeply. And he also takes care with Martin's character, showing how the autodidact, hard-edged attitude that makes him so monstrous also gives Turtle the means to plot against him. Ultimately, though, this is Turtle's story, and she is a remarkable teenage hero, heavily damaged but admirably persistent. A powerful, well-turned story about abuse, its consequences, and what it takes to survive it.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from July 1, 2017
      My absolute darling, Martin calls his 14-year-old daughter, Turtle. The girl's mother is dead, and the misanthropic and misogynistic father and self-hating daughter live, surrounded by guns, in a run-down house on the Northern California coast near Mendocino. A pariah at school, Turtle has only one friend and confidant, her alcoholic grandfather, until she meets funny, articulate Jacob, who is fascinated by her. Learning of her interest in the boy, Martin beats her savagely with an iron poker, saying You're mine. Mine. Perhaps further expressing his ownership of his daughter, he routinely rapes her, leaving Turtle with deeply conflicted feelings, both loving and hating him simultaneously. This is Turtle's life until her grandfather's death becomes the catalyst for Martin's disappearance. In his absence, Turtle leads a relatively peaceful existence in Jacob's company until her father returns three months later, bringing with him a 10-year-old girl, and things begin to change dramatically. Turtle is an extraordinary character whose thoughts and actions enliven the pages of Tallent's remarkable first novelremarkable not only for its characterization but also for its minute examination of the natural world that Turtle inhabits. So vivid is the gorgeously realized setting that it becomes itself a major character in a novel that lingers in the mind long after the final page.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

    • Library Journal

      April 15, 2017

      Fourteen-year-old Turtle wanders the northern California coast but always circles back to her troubled father, the center of her life since her mother's death. But then she meets Jacob, who lives comfortably in a big house and thinks she's awesome, and suddenly Turtle understands that life with her father cannot continue. How good is this late August title? Good enough to make the BEA Buzz panel.

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 30, 2017
      Voice-over actor McKenna delivers a chilling rendering of Tallent’s debut novel, which depicts the horrific abuse and neglect of a preteen girl on the rugged Northern California coast. McKenna masterfully inhabits the inner monologue of young Julia “Turtle” Alveston with a husky, quivering voice that manages to portray both self-loathing pain and steely determination. McKenna switches between the male and female characters with ease, most notably in the interactions between Turtle and her abusive father, Martin. McKenna captures equal parts regret and concern in giving voice to Turtle’s gruff, alcoholic paternal grandfather. She also shines in her delivery of Turtle’s love interest Jacob, a boy from a wealthy family whose precocious intellect parallels Turtle’s own sense of being different from her peers. McKenna portrays the conversations between these young characters as natural and plausible. McKenna deepens the story with spot-on vocal renderings of the protagonist and her peers; both Turtle and Jacob sound simultaneously young and advanced for their age. A Riverhead hardcover.

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Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:920
  • Text Difficulty:4-5

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