Gabriel Tallent

I wasn't seeking a novel about the intense platonic friendship between two young rock climbers, but here Crux is, and she’s a beauty

Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

There are books we like well enough to recommend, but there are a very few - To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Things They Carried - that we remember forever. To my own shortlist I can now add My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent The word masterpiece has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one

Stephen King, praise for My Absolute Darling

An outstanding book that could be this year's A Little Life

Dan and Tamma are two Californian teenagers growing up dirt poor in the shadows of the Joshua Tree National Park, one of the world’s great rock climbing meccas. Their mothers had once been teenage waitresses and best friends until their paths diverged. Now Dan’s mother spends her days locked in her room, her dreams squandered and all her hopes pinned on getting her precociously clever son out of their town and away to university. 
 
Tamma’s mother holds no such ambition for her difficult, mouthy, snaggle-toothed, truant-playing, queer younger daughter, who everyone but Dan believes to be a troublemaker and no-hoper. But Tamma and Dan are fuelled by dreams of becoming legendary rock climbers, of devoting their lives to summiting the most challenging climbs and defying all the expectations, both good and bad, that others have for them. 
 
Climbing - each morning, sun-up, cliff faces test their bodies to their limits - is where their friendship is forged. It’s also the one thing that gives them hope. But as their final year of high school unfolds and their climbs become ever more dangerous, and their home lives ever more extreme, it’s inevitable that something is going to snap...

Gabriel Tallent

Praise for Crux

I wasn't seeking a novel about the intense platonic friendship between two young rock climbers, but here Crux is, and she’s a beauty

There are books we like well enough to recommend, but there are a very few - To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Things They Carried - that we remember forever. To my own shortlist I can now add My Absolu ...

An outstanding book that could be this year's A Little Life

I wasn't seeking a novel about the intense platonic friendship between two young rock climbers, but here Crux is, and she’s a beauty

There are books we like well enough to recommend, but there are a very few - To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Things They Carried - that we remember forever. To my own shortlist I can now add My Absolu ...

An outstanding book that could be this year's A Little Life

I wasn't seeking a novel about the intense platonic friendship between two young rock climbers, but here Crux is, and she’s a beauty

There are books we like well enough to recommend, but there are a very few - To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Things They Carried - that we remember forever. To my own shortlist I can now add My Absolu ...

An outstanding book that could be this year's A Little Life

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