Booksellers have chosen Gabriel Tallent’s harrowing debut novel, My Absolute Darling (Riverhead Books), as the number-one September Indie Next List pick…This is a Great American Novel. Exquisitely lush language of the natural world; startlingly vivid characters; a global understanding of social context, in a particular place; and, in this case, steel-wire narrative tension stringing through the beautiful prose like piano wire. It is the book this year that I feel every American should read, because of its greatness and also because of its deep wrestling with issues of class, complacency, climate change, culture, and especially gender.
–Bookweb.org (interview with author)
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.
-Goodreads
Note that this book includes sexual and physical abuse themes that may not be suitable for younger minds.
Goodreads Reviews
3.6 rating based on 51,097 ratings (all editions)
ISBN-10: 0735211175
ISBN-13: 9780735211179
Goodreads: 33572350
Author(s): Publisher:
Published: //
At 14, Turtle Alveston knows the use of every gun on her wall. She knows how to snare a rabbit, sharpen a blade and splint a bone. She knows that her daddy loves her more than anything else in this world and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her with him.
But 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. Or why making a friend may be the bravest and most terrifying thing she has ever done.
Sometimes the people you’re supposed to trust are the ones who do most harm. And what you’ve been taught to fear is the very thing that will save you…
