![]() ![]() Her father insults her horrifically leading her to hate her personality, her intellect and her body. The greatest power of this novel is in its evocation of Turtle’s development and conflicted psychology. Brett and Jacob’s characters are so idiosyncratic that it’s difficult to believe the bond they hurriedly form with the aloof and combative figure of Turtle. But she had, she thinks, no idea how differently." It’s tremendously powerful how the author presents this shift, yet it also felt slightly jarring. This realization forcefully smacks the girl: "Turtle has always known that other people grew up differently than she did. The landscape which felt totally wild, untamed and impoverished through Turtle’s eyes reveals itself as an ordered and privileged place filled with affluent houses and valuable property. It’s through the friendship that Turtle strikes up with Brett and Jacob that the reader is keyed into a whole level of society surrounding her which Turtle is excluded from. This is a consistent trope throughout the novel with Martin who often applies philosophical stances to their situations or even how he names a hated spider that inhabits their house Virginia Woolf. Brett and Jacob are just a little older than her, yet they are so learned that they frequently drop literary allusions into their discussions and reference classic literature. The most fascinating way the novel deviates from being truly naturalistic is in the social interactions Turtle has with a couple of boys she meets on a hike. It’s both concretely realistic and saturated by an elegiac filter that makes it feel mythic. The closest comparison I can make is to the film ‘The Night of the Hunter’ which pays close attention to the details of nature and children’s loss of innocence under an insidious masculine figure. For instance, when she sees a well-meaning girl at her school she thinks: "I will grow up to be forthright and hard and dangerous, not a subtle, smiling, trick-playing cunt like you." The blunt unmediated reality of her inner and outer life are so forcefully presented, yet the trajectory of her story and interactions with others feel more akin a highly stylized drama. Turtle’s psychology is presented in a complex way to show her skewed perspective of the world that’s been tainted by Martin’s oppositional personality and overbearing ideology filled with hate towards women. Morgan or the pastoral scenes found in books by Émile Zola. This reminded me of the kind of detail found in recent novel “The Sport of Kings” by C.E. Frequently scenes are filled with rich descriptions of the plants and animals that surround their rural house. The story is highly attuned to the natural world. Tallent has a curious writing style which treads somewhere between a hyper-realized reality and an elevated intellectual drama. MY ABSOLUTE DARLING MOVIE RIGHTS FULLThis is a mesmerizing story full of courage, dramatic scenes and insight into the formation of a severely damaged young individual’s identity. As Turtle prepares to go to high school and grows older, their isolated home life becomes more strained and intolerable. She’s a very adept student who can load, clean and accurately fire a range of guns. Their shack is filled with an arsenal of weapons which he frequently trains Turtle in using. She goes by the nickname 'Turtle' but Martin more often affectionately calls her 'Kibble' or 'My Absolute Darling.' Martin is very scholarly and often reads philosophy, but he’s prone to paranoia as he has extreme survivalist beliefs. The only other familial contact she has is with her decrepit but kindly grandfather, Daniel. Fourteen year old Julia is raised by her single father Martin in a rundown house on the California coast. ![]() Debut novel “My Absolute Darling” by Gabriel Tallent gives a startlingly new and heart-wrenching look at the way a child is made to feel dependent upon her father's abuse. Not only does this warp a young person's development, but normalizes cruelty to the degree where a child might then inflict it upon others and themselves. One of the most horrific of human betrayals must be the abuse of a child by a parent. ![]()
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