
My Absolute Darling
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Alex McKenna
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By:
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Gabriel Tallent
A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming audiobook about one 14-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At 14, 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 listener 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 book that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
©2017 Gabriel Tallent (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"Alex McKenna's performance of Tallent's disturbing debut novel is likely to incite goose bumps and nightmares." (AudioFile)
"The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." (Stephen King)
"My Absolute Darling is a novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.... Tallent [is a] prodigiously talented new writer.” (The Washington Post)
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Precious meets Misery meets Die Hard
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I also must comment on the narrator for the audiobook. I could hardly imagine a more perfect voice, and the delivery was flawless. I highly recommend this book in the audio version, and I think I may also buy the hardcover version to have a copy of this fine novel for my library and to enjoy the language at a slower pace than by listening.
Wow... And excellent audio
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Compelling
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This book is gritty, brutal, beautifully written, and at times heartbreaking. The characters are not like any people you know in your life. Maybe because of that you can remove yourself from the violence of the narrative.
If violence and enough swearing to make your ears bleed make you queasy, then pass on this one. If you want to listen to a book unlike anything you've read/listened to before, then dive in.
Alex McKenna has a raspy voice befitting the story. Listen to a sample to decide if her voice annoys you. I happen to love her voice but many of the reviewers do not. She narrated "Sweetbitter" so I was familiar with her voice.
A Book of Firsts
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interesting read
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Not agreeing with the negative reviews!
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Amazing story beautifully written and told
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Horrific
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Troubling
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Masterful
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