The Absolutes: A Novel

by Molly Dektar Narrated by Carlotta Brentan

Overview

""Read this. Right now."" -Brandon Taylor

""Molly Dektar can write like hell. [The Absolutes] is simply ravishing."" -Melissa Febos

For fans of Emma Cline and Garth Greenwell, an arresting, seductive novel about one woman's headlong dive into a reckless affair that leaves her teetering on the edge of sanity.

“In truth, the idea of evil didn't worry me at all. There were all these checks on it, of romance and restraint. In such a context, evil was intriguing.”

When Nora, a withdrawn American teenager, is sent to live with relatives in Turin, she meets Nicola, the enigmatic son of the most powerful aristocratic family in Italy.

Years later, the two reconnect in New York and begin a heated affair. Propelled by disorienting desire, Nora quickly becomes entangled in Nicola's insular, menacing world of old-world luxury and family secrets. When she suspects she's being used in a secret plot to overthrow his corrupt father, Nora willfully turns submissive to Nicola, pushing against the boundaries of her own moral limits until she finds herself spiraling on a path of self-destruction.

The Absolutes*is searing, subversive examination of manipulation, obsession, and sexual desire. With unsparing intrigue and ferocity, Dektar proves herself to be one of the most ambitious writers working today.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"The deep, messy complexities of desire are on full view in The Absolutes." — Washington Post

"A gorgeous portrait of love, desire, treachery, and intellect. Dektar’s language is sensual and rich with texture, especially in details of the snowy Turin mountainside and the humming streets of New York. Like an alchemist, Dektar balances ethereal moments of intimacy with very pedestrian images of daily life. Readers will be left thinking about this mysterious, dazzling love story long after closing the back cover." — Booklist

"A Gothic tinge and carefully drawn, elite atmosphere bring to mind Donna Tartt and make Nora’s narration especially fun....The Absolutes makes a strong case for the unreliability of any narrator caught up in romantic obsession." — Observer

"The Absolutes is fantastic, a dark, utterly absorbing novel about infatuation and power. It has an elegant, headlong intensity that captures its central affair with style and grace to spare." — Andrew Martin, author of Early Work

“The Absolutes is a mesmerizing, deeply felt portrait of one woman testing the moral limits of intimacy and obsession. In continually stunning prose, Dektar brings to life a thrilling exploration of love and sexual desire.”  — Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want and Flight

"Molly Dektar can write like hell. [The Absolutes] is simply ravishing." — Melissa Febos

"Read this. Right now." — Brandon Taylor

"A tremendous, discomfiting book charged with both the volatility and indelibility of desire. With vision, courage, and distinctive sorcery, Dektar plumbs richly layered worlds of feeling; the results left me rearranged.”
— Hermione Hoby, author of Virtue

"A thrilling novel about passion, obsession, and the unraveling of selfhood. Against a lush backdrop of Turin and New York, Molly Dektar skillfully tracks the path of yearning to its ultimate point of collapse. This is a dark, exciting, and wholly seductive work." — Aysegül Savas, author of White on White

"Perfect for those who like a soupçon of Wittgenstein and a dollop of Meister Eckhart with their sadomasochism." — Kirkus Reviews

"The Absolutes takes seriously the ferocity of youth, when no idea is too big, no desire too strong. In vivid prose and precise detail, Dektar evokes the dangerous magnetism that binds people together—and the even more perilous mysteries that keep them from breaking free." — Clare Sestanovich, author of Objects of Desire

author of Early Work Andrew Martin

The Absolutes is fantastic, a dark, utterly absorbing novel about infatuation and power. It has an elegant, headlong intensity that captures its central affair with style and grace to spare.”

Kirkus Reviews

2023-04-24
A young American woman spends 15 years in the obsessive, erotic thrall of an Italian nobleman who lives by the rigid “principles” described by the title of Dektar’s second novel.

Nora first meets the handsome, mysteriously charismatic Nicola in a ski gondola while she’s staying with relatives in Turin. She’s a troubled 15-year-old who self-cuts and obsesses about “different kinds of power,” and he’s slightly older. Nora’s cousin Federica, with whom Nora shares an erotically charged connection, describes Nicola vaguely as “evil,” but when he touches Nora’s shoulder to calm her fear of heights, she experiences a thrilling shock. Five years later, she runs into Nicola at a party at her American college. After they speak briefly, she becomes convinced that, for her, Nicola will always be “the pinnacle of something.” Just what that “something” is becomes the novel’s central unanswered question. Years pass. At 28, Nora believes she’s content living with a “good” man in Brooklyn and working as a researcher for a financial intelligence company. Nora claims she no longer “dwell[s] on control and power.” Wrong! Nicola shows up yet again, and the rest of the novel charts Nora’s slide into their long, increasingly sadomasochistic affair. Recently married and working for his extremely rich, corrupt, perhaps even murderous father, Nicola initially stokes Nora’s desire through talk without touch. His religious mysticism, philosophic pronouncements concerning good and bad, and brutal views on (his own) superiority strike Nora as “romantic,” full of “grand passion, honor, irrational, primitive devotion.” Soon the two are sharing not only interminable conversations, but graphic sex, by turns violent and demeaning as Nicola’s demands intensify. His willing partner, Nora craves his control. She wants to be hit and strangled even while recognizing “something wrong” with Nicola’s entwining of vengeance and intimacy. The book lives inside Nora’s perceptions, which after a while become as redundant as the sex itself.

Perfect for those who like a soupçon of Wittgenstein and a dollop of Meister Eckhart with their sadomasochism.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176762983
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	07/11/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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