11.4.19
Many recent young adult novels have featured adolescent girls who are
self-sufficient and wise beyond their years, coming of age in harsh,
unforgiving worlds. Girls save entire civilizations or stave off
vampires. (“Twilight,”
in fact, gets wry product placement in this story.) And young adult
novels like to feature thorny social and family issues. Nevertheless,
someone should slap an NC-17 label on “My Absolute Darling.” As well as
being graphic about its sexual violence — and violence in general — the
novel is long, dense, ornate in diction and full of sophisticated
literary allusions. “Middlemarch” gets a shout-out, as does“Deliverance.”
Martin reads Kant and Hume; there’s a bullied kid named Rilke. The
analogues are not recent YA hits but novels like Charles Portis’s “True Grit” and Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” both of which also feature teenage protagonists.
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