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Audiobook15 hours
My Absolute Darling: A Novel
Written by Gabriel Tallent
Narrated by Alex McKenna
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
"The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." —Stephen King
"Our generation's next beloved literary heroine." –Harper's Bazaar
"One of EW's favorite books of the year so far…an unputdownable coming-of-age novel." —Entertainment Weekly
A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, 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 reader 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 read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
"Our generation's next beloved literary heroine." –Harper's Bazaar
"One of EW's favorite books of the year so far…an unputdownable coming-of-age novel." —Entertainment Weekly
A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, 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 reader 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 read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
Editor's Note
Delicate yet searing…
With rave reviews across the board, this debut novel is preceded by its reputation. The teenage protagonist, Turtle, has been getting the lion’s share of the book’s attention, and for good reason. But the writing is also wonderful, delicate yet searing. “My Absolute Darling” is one for the books.
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Reviews for My Absolute Darling
Rating: 3.918032786885246 out of 5 stars
4/5
61 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5this book is good, i very very like this book
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really stunning and well read. A story painful and important and breathtaking, my favorite thing I’ve read all year.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Deep but left me wondering.. not a bad thing though. Loved the main character. Will be reading more by this author!!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the kind of story where you hope not even one word of it is true. It’s that harsh. But Julia/Turtle will always be one of my all time favorite characters. A very well-written and most memorable book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A tough story to get through, but well worth the read
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I'm not even half way through and it's driving me crazy. The whole book is "he says and then she says and he says and he says and she says and he says he says she says and then says he says then says...." Omg, author, get a thesaurus! I can't even concentrate on the actually dialog, which in and of itself gets tedious at several points. AND on top of that the narrator is pretty bad at reading. She has a contrived tone; overly theatrical...like kids telling ghost stories around a campfire. She puts emphasis on the wrong words, ruining the already long trains of seemingly unessesary adjectives... or is that the authors fault for using too many details? And I mean details, not descriptives. Details go in one ear and out the other. These don't paint a picture, they just fill up space. I'll finish the book and get back to you...
Update: pretty close to the end. I hate this story. Every interaction between every character is teeth grindingly obnoxious. A lot of random events lead to nothing. What's with the scorpion eating scene? Just, why? This shouldn't be "a novel," it should be a short story. Unless something amazing happens towards the end...
Update: Just finished it. I kind of feel like an asshole now just because it had the happy ending that absolutely darlingly needed to comfort the reader.... but that does not make up for the journey here. I found one single aspect of the whole story that resurfaced at the end to make it semi-redeemable... Which I won't spoil.... It's also why I feel like changing from a one star review to two. But overall? Blah.4 people found this helpful