{"id":2444,"date":"2017-08-27T19:48:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T13:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=2444"},"modified":"2017-08-27T19:48:52","modified_gmt":"2017-08-27T13:48:52","slug":"review-of-gabriel-tallents-my-absolute-darling-in-the-dallas-morning-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/08\/27\/review-of-gabriel-tallents-my-absolute-darling-in-the-dallas-morning-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Gabriel Tallent&#039;s &quot;My Absolute Darling&quot; in the Dallas Morning News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So my review of Gabriel Tallent&#8217;s debut novel, <em>My Absolute Darling<\/em>, appears in the <em>Dallas Morning News<\/em> today, and can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/arts\/books\/2017\/08\/25\/dad-monster-absolute-darling-tells-horrific-tale\">here<\/a>. The marketing of this novel seems odd: The combination of its sweet title, the brightly colored branches and needles of the redwoods (it&#8217;s set in Northern California) on the book jacket and the glowing blurbs (one of which mentions the book&#8217;s &#8220;humor&#8221;) makes it seem the book is being presented as something of a love story. But the actual plot line is about a beer-guzzling, crazed loner of a father raping and abusing his much-put-upon daughter, a rough-hewn teenage girl. It&#8217;s a tough story, and by the end, resembles more horror than coming-of-age\u2014a hybrid of sorts. That&#8217;s not unusual (the hybrid nature), and writers\u2014such as Stephen Graham Jones&#8217;s in\u00a0<em>All the Beautiful Sinners<\/em> and many others\u2014have done this masterfully, though I think it&#8217;s usually acknowledged in the presentation of the book. I was surprised while reading it, noticing that great discrepancy between the book the ad copy presented and what it actually was.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2445\" title=\"61tv2yxvsIL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_\" src=\"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/61tv2yxvsIL._SX327_BO1204203200_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"329\" height=\"499\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So my review of Gabriel Tallent&#8217;s debut novel, My Absolute Darling, appears in the Dallas Morning News today, and can be found here. The marketing of this novel seems odd: The combination of its sweet title, the brightly colored branches &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/08\/27\/review-of-gabriel-tallents-my-absolute-darling-in-the-dallas-morning-news\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,29],"tags":[55,92,178],"class_list":["post-2444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-the-west","tag-book-reviewing","tag-gabriel-tallents-my-absolute-darling","tag-the-west"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}