A review by books_plants_hikes
My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
Here is the ugly truth about My Absolute Darling, I didn't enjoy reading it. I actually hated it. I messaged my friend and said I wanted to burn the book. It brought up a slew of emotions for me; in part because I'm human and in part because I have a history that involves trauma. I think we should be sensitive to that, if your story has physical, emotional, sexual abuse in it, choose this book with caution because it's going to impact you harder than someone who doesn't have that in their story.
That being said...
We need books like this. They aren't suppose to feel good to read. But if we are ever, to be able to understand each other's suffering better, we must read books like this. I want to read books that change how I see the world, change how I interact with, impact, and love others. I can't embrace change without leaving my comfort zone, without getting out of that feel good place, and neither can you.
This isn't a feel good book.
I've read several reviews that tear the author down for his descriptions of the abuse and the dialogue that Turtle has in her mind, largely of self hate. I hated reading those parts, because I'm human. Because someone who I loved made me talk to myself in that same way.
But here's the deal, we need to read that. We need to understand how abuse like this breaks a human, how it changes them, how it literally takes them apart and puts them back together differently, how it makes them hate themselves.
If you haven't ever lived through that type of trauma, you really cannot understand. You can't understand what it's like to betray yourself in order to survive and hate yourself for it. This book, in my opinion no matter how difficult it is to read helps the readers to understand what that is like.
I hope you wanted to rescue Turtle the whole time. I hope you pay attention to Jacob and Anna's behavior, it gave Turtle strength. We need more Jacobs and more Annas in the world. There are many, many Jacobs and Annas in my world. Thank you to those angels.
Here's a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
(If you're going to read the book, you might stop here. But I don't think there are any spoilers.)
"She thinks, maybe it was you all along Maybe there is something in you. Something rotten. You asked for it, or you wanted it. Of course you did. You brought him into his when you were just a child..."(pg, 292)
"Turtle thinks, pull the trigger. She can imagine no other way forward. She thinks, pull the trigger. But if you do not pull the trigger, walk back up that creek and in through the door and take possession of your mind, because your inaction is killing you. She sits looking out at the beach and she thinks, I want to survive this." (pg. 338)
"Then she thinks, but if I go back up the stairs, there will be a whole tract of myself I will have to keep half lit by remembering, and I will never come to peace with it, but if I go in there now and I do just the best that I can, that is a story I can tell myself, however it ends. More than anything, more than life itself, she wants Jacob back, she wants her dignity back. She thinks, okay, you cunt, put your brain in your lunch box and go to work. She thinks, if you're going to do this, you have to do it exactly right." (pg. 358)
"Way up above her, the tips of the redwoods swung in the breeze and they were a delicate green and Turtle was alive. Preposterously alive, for all the mistakes she had made." (pg. 399)
"The truth is that things do not work out, that there are no solutions, and you can go a year, a whole year, and be no better, no more healed, maybe even worse, be so skittish that if you're walking down the street with Anna, and if someone opens a car door and gets out and slams the door you turn around, honest-to-god ready to kill them, turn around so fast that Anna, who knows what is happening, cannot even open her mouth in time and you're standing there, crying, and there's some guy in a leather jacket and a fedora getting out of his Volkswagen Rabbit starting at you like, is this girl all right? and you want to be like, this girl is not all right, this girl will never be all right." (pg 411)
That being said...
We need books like this. They aren't suppose to feel good to read. But if we are ever, to be able to understand each other's suffering better, we must read books like this. I want to read books that change how I see the world, change how I interact with, impact, and love others. I can't embrace change without leaving my comfort zone, without getting out of that feel good place, and neither can you.
This isn't a feel good book.
I've read several reviews that tear the author down for his descriptions of the abuse and the dialogue that Turtle has in her mind, largely of self hate. I hated reading those parts, because I'm human. Because someone who I loved made me talk to myself in that same way.
But here's the deal, we need to read that. We need to understand how abuse like this breaks a human, how it changes them, how it literally takes them apart and puts them back together differently, how it makes them hate themselves.
If you haven't ever lived through that type of trauma, you really cannot understand. You can't understand what it's like to betray yourself in order to survive and hate yourself for it. This book, in my opinion no matter how difficult it is to read helps the readers to understand what that is like.
I hope you wanted to rescue Turtle the whole time. I hope you pay attention to Jacob and Anna's behavior, it gave Turtle strength. We need more Jacobs and more Annas in the world. There are many, many Jacobs and Annas in my world. Thank you to those angels.
Here's a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
(If you're going to read the book, you might stop here. But I don't think there are any spoilers.)
"She thinks, maybe it was you all along Maybe there is something in you. Something rotten. You asked for it, or you wanted it. Of course you did. You brought him into his when you were just a child..."(pg, 292)
"Turtle thinks, pull the trigger. She can imagine no other way forward. She thinks, pull the trigger. But if you do not pull the trigger, walk back up that creek and in through the door and take possession of your mind, because your inaction is killing you. She sits looking out at the beach and she thinks, I want to survive this." (pg. 338)
"Then she thinks, but if I go back up the stairs, there will be a whole tract of myself I will have to keep half lit by remembering, and I will never come to peace with it, but if I go in there now and I do just the best that I can, that is a story I can tell myself, however it ends. More than anything, more than life itself, she wants Jacob back, she wants her dignity back. She thinks, okay, you cunt, put your brain in your lunch box and go to work. She thinks, if you're going to do this, you have to do it exactly right." (pg. 358)
"Way up above her, the tips of the redwoods swung in the breeze and they were a delicate green and Turtle was alive. Preposterously alive, for all the mistakes she had made." (pg. 399)
"The truth is that things do not work out, that there are no solutions, and you can go a year, a whole year, and be no better, no more healed, maybe even worse, be so skittish that if you're walking down the street with Anna, and if someone opens a car door and gets out and slams the door you turn around, honest-to-god ready to kill them, turn around so fast that Anna, who knows what is happening, cannot even open her mouth in time and you're standing there, crying, and there's some guy in a leather jacket and a fedora getting out of his Volkswagen Rabbit starting at you like, is this girl all right? and you want to be like, this girl is not all right, this girl will never be all right." (pg 411)