My Absolute Darling: A Novel (Unabridged) My Absolute Darling: A Novel (Unabridged)

My Absolute Darling: A Novel (Unabridged‪)‬

    • 3.6 • 18 Ratings
    • $19.99

    • $19.99

Publisher Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST
NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017
ONE OF NPR’S ‘GREAT READS’ OF 2017
A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

AN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Impossible to put down." NPR


"A novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.” —The Washington Post
 

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

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. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption. With Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, the reader watches, heart in throat, as this teenage girl 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.

GENRE
Fiction
NARRATOR
AM
Alex McKenna
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
15:47
hr min
RELEASED
2017
August 29
PUBLISHER
Penguin Audio
SIZE
971.5
MB

Customer Reviews

283747392929827 ,

garbage

To echo Roxanne Gay's review, this book depicts "the kind of story I tend to gravitate to. But… there was a lot of darkness and grittiness and I didn't feel especially moved by any of it."

I stopped reading about 40% in because the prose was was gratuitous and self-indulgent. Some of the descriptions of child abuse also felt lurid. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised the young, female heroine was invented by a dude--one who doesn't portray trauma with much nuance or understanding.

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