Author of debut ‘masterpiece’ comes to Westerly
Westerly — Gabriel Tallent’s debut novel has been hailed by Stephen King, praised by The New York Times and named a No. 1 Indie Next pick by booksellers. On Thursday, locals can learn what all the fuss is about.
At the Savoy Bookshop & Cafe, Annie Hartnett of Boston’s Grub Street writing center will interview Tallent, after which he will sign copies of his novel, “My Absolute Darling.”
The “darling” is Turtle, also known as Julia, the 14-year-old daughter of a survivalist who must learn a different sort of survival to escape her alcoholic, abusive father.
Tallent pulls no punches as he takes the reader inside Turtle’s world. We feel her ambivalent attachment to Martin, her father, as well as her need to push other adults away. When she meets two precocious teen boys who are lost in the woods, Turtle has a chance not only to make friends but find a way out of her dark world.
The Savoy was able to book Tallent after John Francisconi, the manager of its sister store, Bank Square Books in Mystic, wrote the first bookseller’s review when the galleys came out
last winter.
Francisconi picked up an advance reading copy of the book in January at a booksellers’ conference in Minneapolis. Its cover was a letter of introduction from Riverhead Books editor Sarah McGrath, explaining why she bought a book with such difficult subject matter, by a novelist with no track record and no MFA in writing.
McGrath is a renowned editor whose authors include Khaled Hosseini (“And the Mountains Echoed”) and Paula Hawkins (“The Girl on the Train”).
Impressed, Francisconi started the book on the plane ride home, quickly realizing it was something special.
“I’ve been waiting all year to pitch it and hand-sell it,” he said of the novel, which was released Aug. 29.
He warns readers about the subject matter, but explains that the book’s brisk pace and nuanced characters make it a must-read.
The novel’s Northern California setting is at once strange and familiar. This is a place of independence and doing your own thing, of aging hippies and isolated wealth. In other words, an easy place for a pedophile to hide in plain sight.
The adults surrounding Turtle mean well but are ultimately hapless to loosen Martin’s sadistic grip on his daughter. There’s her outdoorsy teacher, Anna, who lets the students call her by her first name. Rilke, the bullied new girl, would seem a potential friend, but Turtle simply turns her self-hatred onto the girl. Even Turtle’s benevolent but troubled grandfather, with whom she plays cribbage, seems powerless to protect her.
If all of this sounds hopeless and depressing, somehow it isn’t. Turtle’s voice is too genuine for us to turn away. Francisconi calls the book “compulsively readable.”
Turtle has been compared to other literary heroines, including Scout of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but ultimately she is strong enough to stand alone in the literary pantheon. Some day people may be comparing other characters to her.
Tallent grew up in Mendocino, the son of writer Elizabeth Tallent. He began working on the novel while a student at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, according to The New York Times, and spent years fashioning it into its present state.
Stephen King calls the book a masterpiece, and it has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Library Journal and Booklist. Riverhead Books is sending Tallent on a national tour, and Rhode Island and Maine are the only New England stops.
Francisconi thinks his early review helped bring Tallent to Westerly. “We were all very enthusiastic, so we were very happy to book him,” he said.