Rating 4⭐s
433 pages
You can buy My Absolute Darling...here
You can find out more about Gabriel Talent...here
‘You think you’re invincible. You think you won’t ever miss. We need to put the fear on you. You need to surrender yourself to death before you ever begin, and accept your life as a state of grace, and then and only then will you be good enough.’
At 14, Turtle Alveston knows the use of every gun on her wall;
That chaos is coming and only the strong will survive it;
That her daddy loves her more than anything else in this world.
And he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her with him.
She doesn’t know why she feels so different from the other girls at school;
Why the line between love and pain can be so hard to see;
Why making a friend may be the bravest and most terrifying thing she has ever done
And what her daddy will do when he finds out …
Sometimes strength is not the same as courage.
Sometimes leaving is not the only way to escape.
Sometimes surviving isn't enough.
I read this book as part of the 52 books in 52 days challenge. For more on this challenge click here. This weeks prompt was a book with a yellow spine. This book was suggested to me by Mark Lowes author of Dandelion ( See If You Like This Then You May Like..)
At the start of this book you may take a little while to work out who the protagonist is as she goes by no less than four names. Her father calls her Kibble (which I had to look up, is an American word for dry dog food! fancy calling your kid dog food!) Her grandfather calls her sweatpea (which seems a whole lot nicer.) She calls herself Turtle but her actual name is Julia. Once you have worked this out you're off and running.
This is a very dark and disturbing book. If any book should have trigger warnings this is it. Turtle is a 14 year old girl. Her father is a "prepper" preparing for a future apocalypse. He is a big violent man who hates society. Yet he is no ignorant red neck though. He is well read especially on philosophy. He seems to me a similar character to the Judge in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian although less inclined into social contact with others than the judge.
Turtle, although semi-feral, has been trained in survival techniques including tracking and the use of guns by her father. Together, they live in an isolated, run-down, ramshackle, old farmhouse where the only clean things are the numerous guns.
Turtle cannot settle into school and as she hits puberty the relationship between her and her father deteriorates from the unusual to the downright toxic. Her father constantly bullies her and allows her no contact with anyone except her aged grandfather and even this is given grudgingly. Yet father and daughter love each other right up to the edge of creepiness. But as turtle begins to bloom into a young woman, and meets boys, she begins to see the wider world and edge away from her father's influence and in so doing their relationship takes a turn for the worse. He becomes violent to her and sexually abuses her. This is dark enough, but is seen in other books. The thing that threw me and this is why this book is the darkest that I have ever read is in her response. She seemed, to a degree, to enjoy the abuse or more specifically the intense attention. And for this she hates herself. This confliction twists her soul. Things come to a head when her father brings home a young homeless child. Turtle can see the pattern will repeat itself. She could possibly live with being a victim, but could she live with herself, allowing a child to be the next victim. Eventually she realises something must change and when that change comes it's going to be horrific.
While the subject matter just feels wrong and dirty the prose does an excellent of portraying Turtle's inner conflict and the love/hate relationship with her abuser. Ultimately it is her about her battle to break free from her father not just physically but more importantly psychologically.
This book will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.
in the end, that’s what life will ask of you. Not technical mastery, but ruthlessness, courage, and singularity of purpose.
It’s horseshit, and it’s no way to raise a child, pretending that the world is going to end, just because you’d prefer it did.”
Nothing is as difficult as a sustained and unremitting contact with your own mind.
She strips and cleans the Sig Sauer by the light of the oil lamp. She taps the magazine in and racks the slide and puts the gun to her temple just to remind herself that she is never so trapped that she cannot escape.
- If You Liked This Then You May Like...
Dandelion by Mark Lowes. (click here for our review)All The Wonderful Ugly Things by Bryn Greenwood.
To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
Gabriel Tallent was born in New Mexico and raised on the Mendocino coast by two mothers. He received his B.A. from Willamette University in 2010, and after graduation spent two seasons leading youth trail crews in the backcountry of the Pacific Northwest. Tallent lives in Salt Lake City.
