My Absolute Darling

A Novel

By: Gabriel Tallent

Narrated by: Alex McKenna

Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming audiobook about one 14-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.

Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At 14, 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. The listener tracks Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage and watches, heart in throat, as she 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 book that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.

©2017 Gabriel Tallent (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Alex McKenna's performance of Tallent's disturbing debut novel is likely to incite goose bumps and nightmares." (AudioFile)

"The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." (Stephen King) 

"My Absolute Darling is a novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.... Tallent [is a] prodigiously talented new writer.” (The Washington Post)

Talented writer that needs direction

What on earth possessed me to read this I'll never know. After spending years in a profession where I had to read patient bio's similar to this story, I might have just drifted into it out of habit; or maybe it was my other habit of reading what the Editors and Critics list as the *Best Of* books. Very profound abuse of a young girl by an eccentric father. The mother has passed away, possibly intentionally -- you'll come to wonder. The psychological manipulations by the father are horrendous, teetering between equally repulsive strategies of treating the girl as a willing lover and as a little girl he wants to protect from a world he believes is coming to an apocalyptic end, interspersed with beatings.

I can't blame anyone for suggesting a book they thought was great...I have to admit Tallent shows promise as a writer far better than most of the debut authors; all the more confusing. He is even poetic at times. But, aside from any leanings toward the poetical...the book is loaded with profanity...loaded. The girl continuously refers to herself (and everyone else) fondly as a *C* word. Sadly, I didn't find the story itself compelling enough to justify the sickening feeling it gave me -- and I'm nowhere near a shrinking violet when it comes to the subject. With such extensive and prolonged abuse, I found myself wondering, where are the responsible adults in this story; where are the red flags and the charging bulls they should be attracting? Without more of a psychological foundation, the story slipped into sensationalism.

If you can take the details of abuse and endure to the end, be prepared for a Deus ex Machina conclusion that eliminated any positive points I may have wanted to give to a new author showing real talent.

Sick, relentlessly brutal.

Any additional comments?

There are many ways to draw attention to sexual, emotional and physical child abuse, and as a therapist I've treated some horror stories, but this book wants to make you squirm, as if poisoned, non-stop -- and I have a fairly high tolerance. This "story" is so disturbingly twisted, it starts to make the listener ill, from the start. The book mixes in intellectual and philosophical "support" to tweak your brain's interests, perhaps to "smooth out" the ravaging plight of the poor protagonist adolescent girl. Even the aspect of "her ambivalent love for her father" gets bathed in the gut wrenching slog through excessive self hatred, that while "sort of" believable, feels gratuitous. I'm an avid audible listener, and varied. I lasted about 2/3'rds. of the way through when I went to the last chapter and listened, hoping for a redeeming ending, but it didn't seem to have one. So when the cruelty aspect reached an EXTREME level, (cutting off a finger of a terrified little 10 yr. old girl, after wounding her with a bullet), I bailed. I recommend the audible folks listen to this and ask themselves what they were thinking in supporting a story so sadistic that it seems to aim to steal or warp the listener's soul. Avoid, unless you like to feel horrible for hours....

Painful

Beautifully written but I’m not sure the pain is worth it in the end. While reading the harrowing details of Turtle’s life I felt anxious and depressed but I pushed through for the payoff of happy or meaningful ending or at least lessons learned. I didn’t get any of that—maybe I just didn’t get it. I really want to like this book but not sure I could recommend it w a clear conscious.

What an awful book

I’ve never read a book with more repetition since Dr. Seuss. Such a slog getting through what should have been a harrowing read. And while the material was written poorly the narration didn’t help : whiny and irritating. my Absolute disappointment.

HORRIBLE

No where in the description of this book does it warn that within the first hour of the book readers will have to witness the graphic description of a daughter being sexually assaulted by her father. DO NOT download this book.

Want my money back

After reading rave reviews from authors and reviewers I hold deep respect for, I downloaded this book.

After listening to 5 chapters I am so done.

I think the phrase "engorged pussy" from the mind of a 14 year old just sexually assaulted by her own father was the straw for me. I think that was used in chapter one.

Besides the gruesome and disgusting descriptions of Turtle's abuse, I thought the detailed descriptions of nature, the house, the guns were clumsy, bloated, annoying and out of place with "the voice" of the author.

I thought I'd try to keep going, and I like dark books, but this one just plain sucks!

Weird and completely underwhelming

This was a weird book. I kept waiting for it to hook me but it never did. I had to force myself to finish but honestly was never really interested.

The characters are not relatable, the graphic scenes feel gratuitous and don't really add anything, and the story as a whole feels disjointed. I had to keep skipping back to see if I missed something because the transitions were so abrupt.

That being said, the narrator did a great job and her voice was perfect for this book.

1/10 would not read again.

Not impressed

The narrator does a great job reading, and the authors environmental descriptions are beautiful. But the actual story moves pretty slow and is rather violent & depressing.

Precious meets Misery meets Die Hard

I bought this book on Stephen King’s much touted endorsement: “a masterpiece,” he called it. Overall an enjoyable but dark read which loses its way in the last quarter of the book when it moves from a tight psychological thriller to basically Die Hard 3 in an instant. I think the author was aiming to secure a film option — over-the-top machine-gun violence at a prom on a beach. Really?

The narrator needs to get over her cold first

What would have made My Absolute Darling better?

After reading a glowing review in the New York Times, I pre ordered this audio book, super excited to listen. Within the first second, I thought "What's up with the narrator's voice?" A few minutes later... "Does she have a cold? Ok, I have no idea what the story is about because I'm so distracted by this voice. Is this her real voice?"

Rewind and start again.

About a minute in: NOPE. I am not doing this. I hate the narrator's voice. She sounds like she has had a cold for 3 days. I've heard so many great things about this novel, and I have no doubt they're true. The publishers made a poor choice in the production of the audio book. I'm definitely returning it and I'll plan to read the physical book instead.