sychpath
This book is one of those that describes the crimes involved sparsely, but uses much longer and rambling sections to get the reader inside Turtle's head so that we know how she feels to the nth degree. Turtle is 14, hates school, can clean a gun quickly and well, and lives in absolute poverty with her father. If I said that Martin, her father, was a psychopath and a child abuser, some of you would stop reading right now and never give this book a second chance. But maybe you should read on. You see Turtle loves her father - although not in the way we want her to. She swears constantly, in her head. She calls herself dreadful things, the kind of names that misogynists call women. And why would she do that? Because those are the terms her father uses.
Turtle is a loner, for many reasons, but she makes the acquaintance of a couple of boys her age and their families, and this is the start of a voyage of self-discovery which may or may not end well. It is only when she meets a ten year old child who has run away from home and her mother's boyfriend that she starts to think about her own life in a different way.
I don't want to put anyone off, but this is a harrowing read, and Martin is the only character in any book I have ever read that I despised with my whole heart and found myself wanting him dead as soon as possible. This is not part of who I am - so the author found a way to make me really "sit up and feel" whilst reading this book - and what a debut he's pulled off.
If the subject matter is not something you can cope with (and I understand that), perhaps this one is best left alone - but once started, I had to read on, and in doing so found a little more about why people stay with abusers. "Walk a mile in my shoes" is the kind of statement that we often dismiss. But in this case, I walked many miles in Turtle's shoes and wanted so much for her to get some kind of happy ending - because she deserved that.
No comments:
Post a Comment