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And you thought your upbringing was rough
Tell the Wolves I’m Home, The Glass Castle, She Left Me the Gun, and My Absolute Darling. As I mentioned in an earlier story, I have this habit of reading two or more books in close proximity to each other that I discover accidentally have a common theme they address. In 2019, I read the above four books — two debut novels, two memoirs — within the space of a few months. They all have a female protagonist or narrator whose family of origin is the subject of the book, although in one case, it is the protagonist’s daughter who is telling the story her mother always concealed from her. None of these families are run-of-the-mill happy families, although most of them do feature happiness and even love. But they also feature various levels of trauma and loss, running the gamut from substance abuse, deep poverty and virtual homelessness, to “comfortable” but broken, to violent, off-the-grid preppers who mistake sex for love. I’ll start with the most troubling and violent narrative.
My Absolute Darling is the first novel of Gabriel Tallent, a young man who grew up in the northern coastal California that forms the setting of the book, and is virtually another character in it. The girl is called Turtle, although her legal name is Julia, and her sociopathic father calls her “kibble.” She is 14, and her mother died (under questionable circumstances) when she was much younger. The…
