Lyrical, compelling and powerful, Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling is a searing and heartbreakingly insightful study of why abuse victims find it so difficult to cut loose from their abusers and how they can become almost complicit in their own exploitation.
Bringing up his daughter Turtle alone on a remote farm in northern California, Martin imparts to her not only all his formidable knowledge of living off the land, but also his deep suspicion of the social contract, effectively cutting them both off from society and normalcy. At 14, Turtle is noiseless, cautious, wiry and tough. She wields guns and knives like a pro — she was handed her first gun when she was six — she hunts, she fishes, she forages. And she gets raped at night by her father. But she knows no life or love other than what her philosophy-spouting, intelligent, handsome father wraps her up in. Besides, he flogs her. At the slightest sign of intransigence. So any desire to complain is effectively snuffed out.
Russian roulette engagement
Turtle interacts with teachers and classmates and life itself through the haze of an intense running interior monologue that shows how deeply she has imbibed the destiny Martin has chosen for her, a “slit” who deserves no better but who is yet better off than “ordinary” people.
Yet, always, flickering like a thin sliver of light on the edges of this black hole is Turtle’s intelligence, her appraisal of the world, her glimpsing of something beyond the life Martin has made for her. You literally will this instinct to win the day, with the same edge-of-the-seat sort of concentration with which Tallent writes the shooting scenes, always a metaphor for Turtle’s Russian roulette engagement with life and with her father.
When Turtle meets and rescues two boys from her school who get lost on a camping trip, both she and the rather bleak, stifling narrative are handed a ventilator.
Abnormal stillness
These two delightful, droll, intelligent and compassionate teenagers, possibly among the most charming young male characters to be ever written, exchange a nonstop, laugh-out-loud repartee, but what they do most importantly is give the reader a different lens with which to view Turtle.
You see what two boys her age see — an abnormal stillness and taciturnity, exceptional survival skills, and an ignorance of the real world that leaves them by turns awed, delighted and puzzled.
By bringing them and their lives in, the book also initiates a fairly evolved nature vs. society, minimalism vs. consumerism debate; and there is the temptation to see in Martin, as some readings have done, signs of redemption in his flailing against civilisational hypocrisies, in his philosophical stances about the environment, and in his ‘real’ love for Turtle.
But none of this can really give even a hint of absolution to this deeply flawed character who is defined primarily by his arrogance and violent apocalypticism. Very early in the book, we encounter Martin reading, tellingly, David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals and if sentiment is indeed the grounding of morality as Hume would argue, then it is exactly sentiment and morality that Martin shows no signs of.
Claustrophobic hold
Turtle’s indoctrination is pretty thorough — Daddy knows everything, he loves her with a love like none other, she is worthless but he can’t live without her, she is responsible for him and his sanity.
This secret, exclusive fate and “absolute” love she believes she has — that’s the key to understanding a victim’s reluctance to escape an abusive relationship, and Tallent is quite brilliant in describing its claustrophobic hold. Even though her teacher, Anna, knows something is wrong — “misogyny, isolation, watchfulness… the three big red flags,” as she tells the principal — she cannot break through Turtle’s defences.
But once these initial encounters are over, the controls established, and “normalcy” in the shape of Brett and Jacob introduced, the narrative begins to flag and everything that happens after feels a little tired, repetitive, somewhat Hollywoodish. In fact, the agonisingly long-drawn ending is written as if the author were already imagining a movie remake. There’s still power, but the punch takes too long to land.
Still, there’s enough steam to see the book through. And to undeniably assert that in its language, its intimate sketching of wild Mendocino (where the writer grew up), and its sensitive, tough-love handling of the inner life of an abuse victim, this makes for an amazingly talented debut.
My Absolute Darling ; Gabriel Tallent, Fouth Estate, ₹699
