Review: My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really struggled with this review. I’d heard so much praise and buzz around this one so I was eager to read it. I even heard someone say that if you love A Little Life, you’d love this one. Well, I loved that book and I was hopeful that this one would wow me as much as that one did. The premise of this one was definitely something that resonates with me. I never back away from the darkness of human experience in my reading. My problem with this one is that there was so much darkness and yet it never worked for me. It felt scientific in some way rather than real. The violence felt very unreal and cardboard to me. It never really moved me in any way. And I think that is my primary issue with this book – it felt like a book written by a man about the trauma and sexual violence of a woman. It’s not that men can’t write about women’s trauma … it’s just that it’s difficult to do with any nuance. And I don’t think it was done well in this novel. Again, it’s tricky. And I didn’t find it to be successful here. The descriptions of the abuse just felt too unreal to me. They were absent any of the nuance or sensitivity that one would expect. And the character of Turtle (the main female character) had so much potential … and it just felt squandered in some way. She was never fully realized for me. There were just so many misses or head shakes for me as I read - mostly in descriptions as they relate to Turtle. Some of that language just didn’t work for me. In fact, it was annoying and often felt almost ‘icky.’ Perhaps that was the intention but it didn’t do the book any good, in my opinion. Ultimately, I finished the book feeling unsettled but not from the content of the book but from the flaws of the book. I saw where there was potential in this one but it feels as if it was never met. I do think that the author did a good job with the setting – I was well aware of the seclusion of this family from the rest of the world. The author did a good job setting the stage and helping it come alive. Although the descriptiveness got away from the author sometimes, I do think he did a good job of painting a picture and making it come alive. If you want a much more nuanced and sensitive exploration of this sort of writing, I’d recommend A Little Life or All the Ugly and Wonderful Things. There are many people who have LOVED this one so if it sounds like something you’d be interested in, I say try it.