美国国家公共电台 NPR Love And Cruelty Are Bound Together In 'My Absolute Darling'

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Gabriel Tallent has written his first novel at the age of 30 and no less than Stephen King calls it a masterpiece to rank with "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "Catch-22." "My Absolute Darling" is the story of a clever, resourceful and lonely 14-year-old girl named Turtle Alveston. Her mother took her life when Turtle was a child, and she's grown up in the woods of Mendocino County, Calif., with her father, Martin, who's taught her how to hunt, shoot and survive.

Martin is intelligent and principled, but he's also abusive and deranged¹. He's built his life around his daughter, and that's the problem. Then Turtle meets a couple of teenage guys in the woods and begins to see her life in a new light. Gabriel Tallent joins us from the studios of member station KUER in Salt Lake City. Thanks so much for being with us.

GABRIEL TALLENT: Thanks for having me, Scott.

SIMON: When the book opens, a lot of adults around Turtle at her school are worried about her, aren't they?

TALLENT: Yes. Some of the teachers, some of the people in Turtle's circle are worried at what they see as her withdrawnness and her isolation² from her peers and possibly her sense of being distant from other girls her age.

SIMON: They, of course, call her father in for what I sense is not the first conference. He's kind of charming, isn't he?

TALLENT: Yes, he is. I mean, he's a charismatic autodidact, a self-taught philosopher of sorts, who's very persuasive³ about philosophy and about questions of the human mind. And he's an impressive personality, not just to Turtle but to other people in his life.

SIMON: But something ugly is going on in the family, isn't it?

TALLENT: I would say so, yes.

SIMON: Yeah, well, help us understand that, if you could 'cause these are very difficult sections to read where his abuse of his daughter is described.

TALLENT: So Martin is a man who, however smart he is, he's a very damaged, a very hurt person. And this struggle is characterized sometimes by moments of great tenderness with his daughter. But it is also characterized by moments of great cruelty when he does terrible harm to her.

SIMON: Every morning, he professes⁴ his love for his daughter. He says, you saved my life every morning. You get up and out of bed, I hear your little footsteps patting down your stairwell and I think, that's my girl. That's the one I'm living for. How does this man, who professes such love, often in tender and even eloquent⁵ words, get love so twisted?

TALLENT: I think that no person is a monolith. And I think that he feels great love for her. And he has moments of seeing clearly how much he loves his daughter and the terrible harm that he has done to her. But such is the nature of his wounds that he sort of can't help himself. He's a terribly hurt person. And love sometimes in a wounded person, translates to great entitlement and possessiveness and his inability to see her as anything but an extension of himself, right?

I was interested in global warming writing this book. And I was interested in why we destroy the things that are most meaningful in our lives. And I think the answer is sometimes because they have such value.

SIMON: Could you read a section for the book from us that we get some idea of the way Martin sees his daughter, Turtle?

TALLENT: OK. He holds her and she stands there, her waist encircled in his embrace. How big you're getting, he says. How strong, my absolute darling, my absolute darling. Yes, she says. Just mine? Just yours, she says. And he crushes the side of his face against her and presses it urgently to her, looks up at her, his arms encircle the small of her back. You promise, he says. I promise, she says. No one else's? No one else's, she says.

SIMON: That's upsetting just to overhear, isn't it?

TALLENT: I tried very hard to write true things about the way that abuse and this kind of sickness creeps into these relationships.

SIMON: Yeah. How does meeting a couple of teenage boys in the woods begin to shake things up for her?

TALLENT: I think that the boys are transformative to Turtle because they are entirely⁶ different from anything she's ever been a part of. Like, largely, she has felt hostile towards the rest of culture and to other people. And she has felt herself to be an outsider. And they sort of show her a relationship that is different than anything she's had before, a very different kind of friendship. And sometimes that's what other people are to us.

They show us that what we thought about the world isn't necessarily true.

SIMON: When there's - what I'll just refer to without giving too much away is a kind of a grim, inspiring and harrowing survival story that follows at some point where, to come of age, Turtle both realizes all the survival skills that her father has taught her and also comes to a reckoning with him. Do you create the character and then just let them fly or do you try and smooth the road for them?

TALLENT: That's an excellent question. There's sort of two questions bound up. I sort of create the character and let them fly. But I have to say that creating the character is a lot of work. I began with just a glimmer⁷, a sort of intuition about who this character would be. And I pursued her draft after draft, looking in each draft for honesty and for what felt real, like, comparing each draft to how a person feels in your life.

And I did that until I arrived at the character you see finally on the pages today.

SIMON: Gabriel Tallent, his highly praised new novel "My Absolute Darling." Thanks so much for being with us.

TALLENT: Thanks so much for having me, Scott.

1 deranged   

adj.疯狂的

参考例句：

• Traffic was stopped by a deranged man shouting at the sky.一名狂叫的疯子阻塞了交通。
• A deranged man shot and killed 14 people.一个精神失常的男子开枪打死了14人。

2 isolation   

n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离

参考例句：

• The millionaire lived in complete isolation from the outside world.这位富翁过着与世隔绝的生活。
• He retired and lived in relative isolation.他退休后，生活比较孤寂。

3 persuasive   

adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的

参考例句：

• His arguments in favour of a new school are very persuasive.他赞成办一座新学校的理由很有说服力。
• The evidence was not really persuasive enough.证据并不是太有说服力。

4 professes   

声称( profess的第三人称单数 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉

参考例句：

• She still professes her innocence. 她仍然声称自己无辜。
• He professes himself to be sad but doesn't look it. 他自称感到悲伤，但外表却看不出来。

5 eloquent   

adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的

参考例句：

• He was so eloquent that he cut down the finest orator.他能言善辩，胜过最好的演说家。
• These ruins are an eloquent reminder of the horrors of war.这些废墟形象地提醒人们不要忘记战争的恐怖。

6 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

7 glimmer   

v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光

参考例句：

• I looked at her and felt a glimmer of hope.我注视她，感到了一线希望。
• A glimmer of amusement showed in her eyes.她的眼中露出一丝笑意。