Tallent's writing at its best at the half-way point in My Absolute Darling

At the mid-way point we encounter some weird plot developments in Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling: First, Turtle's grandfather notices the severe bruise marks on T's shoulder and things and correctly intuits that her father/his son, Martin, has been beating her. Grandfather tries to confront Martin about this and, under great stress as M denies everything, the grandfather suffers a stroke and dies. Oddly, the night of his father's death, Martin goes over the grandfather's trailer, bringing Turtle with him, and destroys the place via arson and a propane explosion (that nearly kills Turtle, btw). After they bury the grandfather - Martin has hoped to make the coffin himself, out of cardboard or some such crap - Martin disappears in the middle of the night, leaving T completely alone. Equally strangely, she takes an axe and a chainsaw and demolishes much of their house (inexplicably burning several thousand $ in cash). She gravitates over to the nearby town of Mendocino and finds the 2 boys she'd befriended, Brett (whose mother, a totally spaced-out massage therapist, reportedly) and Jacob, on whom T has a bit of a crush - and who turns out to be from a very wealthy, artistic, tolerant family. The 3 begin spending a lot of time together (again, I can't help thinking of the relationships among the group of young boys and the alluring girl in Stranger Things), and at one point Jacob comes over to T's house alone - looks like we're heading for a sexual relationship between these two (and I can't quite figure out why her house isn't in ruins, but it seems she's done a lot of repairs and clean-up? - she's not a totally abandoned child, but it's not obvious as she's very competent and school is out of session, so no adult or authority figure is involved in her life - Jacob's parents and oblivious or indifferent of both) when they go fishing in a tide pool for eels and get swept to sea by a sudden rogues wave. Here we see Tallent's writing at its best, as he gives a great, cinematic description of their effort to survive while churned about by waves and tide. So we're half-way through and wondering when or how Martin will reappear, what this will mean for Jacob or for any young man involved with Turtle, and what T will do w/ the guns and knife that she so meticulously maintains.

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