My Absolute Darling

Gabriel Tallent Fourth Estate €15.60

Turtle Alveston roams the northern Californian coast with seemingly boundless freedom. But back home, her life contracts; she has been raised single-handedly by her magnetic but savagely controlling father Martin. As she moves from childhood to adolescence, discovering friendship and the throb of a teenage crush, his spell over her wavers. Turtle – kind, lion-hearted, a survivor in the face of emotional and physical perils – is a heroine who’ll hover in your mind long after the final chapter and Tallent has produced an intense, gloriously written account of her thrilling bid for freedom. Gwendolyn Smith