kplab81 's review for:

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent

4.0

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Oof. This book was a devastating way to start off my 2020 Reading Challenge. Tallent presents his audience with an unlikely and unusual heroine, the 14 year-old Turtle (nee Julia), who lives largely removed from society (although she does begrudgingly attend school) with her father, Martin. Turtle's family history is bare, but we do know that her mother died (or fled?) the family when Turtle was young, leaving her in the hands of her father who is equal parts charming and sadistic. Under Martin's eye, Turtle has learned to deftly navigate the wilderness surrounding their family's home and is equally comfortable field-stripping her Sig Sauer pistol or skeet shooting off the family's deck. All of this, Tallent presents without hyperbole - using Turtle's voice, the circumstances of her life are presented a mere facts, things that come second-nature to her after years of tutelage. She is less adept at school, which isolates her from her peers and other adults, like her teacher Anna, who want to reach out and connect with the girl they see as wayward and lost. The irony being that Turtle is never lost - she walks barefoot for miles in the Northern California woods, ultimately rescuing two classmates (Brett and Jason) who do happen to be lost and become her first true friends. The heartbreak of this story is watching Turtle navigate this world with such confidence (spooling off plant names, gauging ocean currents, diving for crabs) while listening to her internal voice that has been poisoned by her misogynistic, violent father. She describes herself in his language - denigrating herself down to the core, making herself believe that only her father can truly love her, and she doesn't deserve a life beyond what she has. After meeting Brett and Jason, Turtle glimpses the world outside her family compound (and even gets little bits of her own history from Brett's mom, a former best friend of Turtle's own mother) and she starts to discover her own voice, which puts her on a crash-course with her father that she knows will be devastating. I have never read a book before that made me literally cringe with discomfort - some of the descriptions of injury and abuse being that painful to read - and I felt fairly certain within about 100 pages how it would have to end. But I honestly could not stop reading it. I desperately wanted to get to the point when Turtle turned the corner to see what happened and Tallent did not disappoint in his 3rd Act.