"put your brain in your lunch box"

Although I went through a Stephen King phase in high school, bringing home Cujo and Christine home from the library where I volunteered shelving books, I have never had the stomach for the horror genre.

So it was with some trepidation that I reached into my TBR stack for a book that my mom had lent me some months ago, maybe even at Christmas?

If a novel could cause PTSD, My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent would be a top contender.  But with each new terror, you simply turn the page with squinted eyes waiting (hoping) for someone to die or seek vengeance or perhaps both. With that caveat, let me proceed.

Turtle lives with her widower father in rural Northern California. After downing a morning breakfast of raw eggs and a slurp of her father’s beer, she takes the bus to school. She doesn’t have any friends and resists the overtures of the new kid that doesn’t know any better than to try being friendly. Her interior monologue is a stream of berating comments that put down others – and herself.  She’d much rather be at home shooting, cleaning her vast arsenal of firearms, or perfecting her survival skills. The end of the world, in the guise of climate change, is at hand.

When she can’t stand her father’s “affection” for a moment longer, one night she does leave. She meets two teenagers lost in the woods and guides them to safety. (The rapid-fire dialogue between Brett and Jacob is incentive enough to keep reading). When she returns home, she realizes she’s entered a whole other world of hurt. Her friendship with Jacob proves harrowing, but exposes her to a new normal. She begins contemplating a more permanent escape.

Close to midnight, I was nearing the end of the book. Some neighbors thought that would be a good time to shoot off the last of their fireworks. Once I had climbed back into my skin, I could only manage to skim through the rest of scene where Turtle finally confronts her father.

In addition to trigger warnings, this book should also come with a “one-sitting” warning. If you can bear to pick it up, you won’t dare put it back down.