![my absolute darling movie my absolute darling movie](https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781982133856/dark-horses-9781982133856_xlg.jpg)
"They are politically involved, but not to the same extent. "Most of the people I hang out with here are athletes," he adds. "I'm self-taught, which I don't recommend," he jokes. Among his first stops after relocating was International Mountain Equipment, where Tallent outfitted himself with rope, harnesses and other items needed take up rock climbing. In Utah, his experience has largely been in the outdoors. Compared to Salt Lake, he says, "There's a much stronger presence of old communes and hippie roots, and a much stronger fringe liberal element." In contrasting his former and current residences, Tallent notes that Mendocino is a town characterized by its extreme liberal counterculture. "I think when people overstate how difficult it is to sympathize with these characters, it is an attempt to put them out of mind, and has little to do with the limits of our compassion and understanding," he says. Tallent, however, bristles slightly when asked whether it was difficult to write from the perspective of a teen girl. Whether investigating a tide pool, hiding or hunting in a forest or tending her own garden, Turtle sees more lush detail in her environment than any other character in the novel can manage. It's also notable in its descriptions of the flora and fauna surrounding her. A scene in which Turtle is suspended over an unsheathed knife and forced to do pull-ups is especially harrowing.
![my absolute darling movie my absolute darling movie](https://static.toiimg.com/thumb/msid-19949442,width-1200,height-900,resizemode-4/.jpg)
The novel is intense in its depiction of physical, emotional and sexual violence. "This is the story of one strong-willed and determined young woman searching for the tools and the strategy of resistance when resistance seems impossible," Tallent says. When Turtle meets Jacob, a high school boy from town, she begins to suspect that there might be alternatives to the way she lives with Martin, and that the hard lessons she's learned might be used to save herself and others. Certain that the world will end soon, Martin is given to elaborate rants and unpredictable cruelty, alternately professing his love for Turtle and breaking down her confidence so that she will never leave him.
#MY ABSOLUTE DARLING MOVIE FREE#
Set amid the Northern California forests and coastline, My Absolute Darling follows 14-year-old Turtle Alveston as she navigates an isolated existence between the home of her survivalist widower father, Martin, and the natural world where she's free to test her skills as she chooses. Tallent's novel reflects an appreciation for where he grew up. "It was an endlessly explorable home base." "I spent a great deal of time outdoors, roaming around," he says of his upbringing. One of his mothers is acclaimed short story writer and Stanford professor Elizabeth Tallent, author of Mendocino Fire. The novel has its roots in Tallent's Northern California childhood and adolescence, but the novel came to fruition in Salt Lake City, where he moved with his wife for her to attend graduate school at the University of Utah.īorn in New Mexico and raised by two mothers, Tallent grew up on the Mendocino coast. Stephen King called it a "masterpiece," and said that it, like To Kill a Mockingbird and Catch-22, is one of those books that "we remember forever." That's the situation in which Salt Lake City writer Gabriel Tallent finds himself with My Absolute Darling, a chronicle of a young girl's reckoning with her abusive father.