Turtle
(Julia) Alveston, 14, lives with Martin, her survivalist father, in a decrepit,
isolated house on the coast of northern California. Martin has taught her how to shoot, make a fire,
and forage for food. He also abuses her
physically, psychologically, and sexually.
Turtle’s life becomes more complicated when she meets two high school
boys, Brett and Jacob. They show her
glimpses into another world which highlights how distorted is her own.
The complex
characterization of Turtle is the outstanding achievement of this novel. She is a tough and resourceful girl who is
totally self-sufficient in the natural world.
Because of her isolation and mistreatment by her father, however, she
has a poor self-image; she is full of doubt and self-loathing. She thinks of herself as “useless” (11) and “bitch”
(62) and “goddamn slut” (80) because those are the things her father calls
her. In fact Martin always addresses her
as “kibble,” thereby reducing her to dog food.
She doesn’t try at school because she is convinced she will fail. Her daily life is wracked with anxiety and
guilt. Like many abuse victims, she
blames herself: “She thinks, maybe it
was you all along. Maybe there is
something in you. Something rotten. You asked for it, or you wanted it. Of course you did. You brought him into this when you were just
a child” (292). And like her nickname
suggests, she is focused on staying safe within her shell so she avoids contact
with others.
When she is
forced to interact with other women, she echoes Martin’s misogynistic comments;
for example, she calls a teacher, one who is trying to help her, a “sideways
bitch” (127) and “fucking whore” (26) and “cunt” (27). Turtle realizes that she shares some of
Martin’s traits: after teasing and
taunting a classmate, “Turtle turns and walks away, and she thinks, that’s not
me, that’s not who I am, that is Martin, that is something Martin does – his knack
for finding the thing you hate about yourself and giving it a name. She thinks, Christ, that was so much more
like Martin, derisive, condescending, than it was like me. . . . She thinks,
this is the part of him I hate most, the part that I revile, and I reached for
it and it came easy” (143-144). What differentiates
her from her father is her ability to feel compassion for others.
Turtle’s
conflict throughout is her feelings for her father. She both loves and hates him. She loves her father and wants to protect
him: “She can’t bear that anyone else
should see something he’s done wrong” (159).
She makes excuses for him; when a teacher suspects Turtle is being
abused, Turtle reminds the teacher that “’He’s still hurt [from my mother’s
death]. He hurts pretty badly’” (131). She could
run away but thinks, “I’m all Martin has, and I can’t leave him alone with
that. I can’t” (305). But though she can admit, “I love him, I love
him so goddamn much,” she will also admit, almost in the same breath, “I hate
him for something, something he does, he goes too far, and I hate him, but I am
unsure in my hatred; guilty and self-doubting and hating myself almost too much
to hold it against him” (80).
Martin is
memorable in his repulsive villainy. He
is very intelligent but uses his intelligence to manipulate others. He is also unpredictable in his behaviour;
one minute he is calm and loving and the next, his volatile temper explodes in
violence. He claims to love his daughter
but it is a warped, possessive love; there is one horrific episode where he
keeps repeating to Turtle, “’You are mine
. . . Mine . . . You are mine . . .
you little bitch, you are mine’” (140
– 141).
Because
Turtle is so connected to the natural world, there are many detailed
descriptions: “She and Jacob find iridescent-green
centipedes, horned sea lemons with lacy gills unfurled, porcelain incrustations
of spiral tube worms. They shift more
cobbles. Sometimes, the water beneath
will be still, the snails clattering across the mother-of-pearl carpets, the
hermit crabs lifting their blue-pink clutch of limbs back into their blue-pink
turban shells, the sullen-looking clingfish suckered against the stone,
stone-colored themselves” (221).
Sometimes nature is used to emphasize Turtle’s situation: her soul is like “a stalk of pig mint growing
in the dark foundation, slithering toward a keyhole of light between the
floorboards, greedy and sun-starved” (44).
The book is
not flawless. The prose tends to be
ornate; at times it seems the author is trying too hard to be poetic. Perhaps it is intended to be a reprieve from
the sometimes breathtaking brutality being portrayed. The dialogue attributed to Brett and Jacob is
unrealistically precocious.
Sixteen-year-old boys are unlikely to be familiar with Finnegans Wake, The Odyssey, The Brothers
Karamazov and To the Lighthouse
(60) or be so verbally adept: “’this is
the chain-saw-wielding, shotgun-toting, Zen Buddhist, one-and-future queen of
postapocalyptic America’” (208).
There are
some problematic scenes as well. The many
descriptions of guns become tedious. Perhaps
it’s my dislike of guns that hates passages describing her shooting: “She knows the sight is level when the edge
appears as thin as a razor – if the gun tips up, she gets a telltale sheen off
the sight’s top surface. . . She eases the play out of the 4.4-pound trigger,
inhales, exhales to the natural slackening of her breath, and rolls on those 4.4
pounds” (5). And since I know nothing
about guns, descriptions of Turtle’s constant maintenance of her weapons are
meaningless to me: “Turtle sits
cross-legged with the AR-10 broken open before her and the bolt carrier gutted
from the receiver, shining red in the firelight, stripped of bolt and cam and
firing pin. She’s poured the carbon
solvent into a lowball glass” (135). There are
also some action scenes that I found over-the-top. The climax seems to be drawn from an action
film.
This book
will not appeal to everyone. It is dark and
disturbing and graphic. I found it an
intense and exhausting read, but one I will not soon forget.
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