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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