Tallent's writing gets stronger and more self-confident as novel progresses

We get some highly dramatic and almost excruciatingly painful scenes in the 2nd half of Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling. GT's writing gets more controlled, stronger, more powerful as this work progresses; in the early going the writing was good but too self-conscious, as noted in earlier posts - so much attention to naming every flower and weed it felt for a while as if I were reading a field guide, and felt certainly out of sync with the consciousness of the characters in the novel - the narrator looming above them like a God, or at least like a botanist. But as we get more caught up in the dramatic plot, so does Tallent, and his writing feels so much more self-assured in these mid-novel scenes: Turtle and her friend, Jacob, swept out to sea by a rogue wave, their struggle to get to relatively safe landing on a rocky outcrop, their struggle to build a fire to survive the cold of a night on the Pacific coast, the return to land and Jacob's solicitous attentions to the wounded Turtle - and, then, the return of Turtle's father, Martin, and his sadistic behavior toward Turtle. You can't stop reading these scenes, but you have to pause once in a while for breath and to shake yourself free from the horrors and intensity of this novel. One thing that's great about this work is Tallent's understanding of the mind of his central character; while it's obvious to us that her father is a sadistic monster and that she should seek shelter and protection from him at whatever cost, we also understand that he is all she knows in the world, at least up to this point, and she's bound by the love he professes for her, this poor lost soul. We get little or nothing of her back story, but we can see her as a severely traumatized victim suffering from a version of the Stockholm Syndrome, falling in love w/ her captor/tormentor in a desperate attempt to save her life. It's not entirely fair to call Tallent's writing "cinematic," as that's only one element of his writing; he also has a depth of understanding of his characters and a detailed appreciation of and knowledge or their world that would not easily be transported on film - though I believe (at least up to this point) that the novel would translate well, if not in its entirety, onto screen.

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