@ogb saidGood point. I bought it at the Gothenburg Book Fair recently. I have read a few chapters and by now I know that the life that 14-year Turtle shares with her widowed father is devastating. There is much to read both on the lines and between and it takes a while to understand that there is no mercy for her at home.
It's rated "only" 3.5 at Amazon and Barnes & Nobles...and is Stephen King the right author to endorse this novel..? (I haven't read it myself).
This is how far I am in the story. There are people trying to get through and help her, but living in isolation with her father and his rules and distorted mind, she tries to avoid a situation. Sudden and unexpected encounters with other young people make her see new things and new perspectives which sound promising but...
"Julia, nicknamed Turtle, is smart and pretty but she doesn't know it. She is full of self-loathing, repeatedly berates herself with words such as "c---" and "slit", can't concentrate in school and has no friends. She lives with her father, Martin, who trains her in Bear Grylls-style survival, gunmanship and misogyny. She is 14 and she is the victim of repeated physical and sexual abuse... Gabriel Tallent's outstanding debut makes for confronting reading but it raises important issues about how we as a society protect the vulnerable from those responsible for their nurturing and care when those in charge are insane and dangerous – and in this case, armed to the teeth..."
I already know this is a not a book for me - it would haunt me long after finishing it.
@Great-Big-Stees
I just started a Robert Forward's book from about 1989 or so, Indistinguishable from magic (Arthur C Clark's 3rd law) Any technology sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from magic.
He did mention one invention he patented, the idea of a satellite, more of a hoverable, where it would be situated about 1 million miles above the north and/or south pole, held there permanently by having enough solar sails to keep it close to the pole line and being used to relay TV, internet, weather and such to just about half of Earth from one sat. Clever idea. No fuel needed to keep it in place. The only problem with it is it would not be very useful for communications as if it were a cell phone relay station because of the 5 odd second time lag one way or 10 seconds or so for a HI and HI back on a phone call but weather sats don't give a crap about a 10 second delay, no big deal for them or military observations, one thing, for military purposes, it would be hard to shoot down, 4 times the distance to the moon and at escape velocity it would be giving them a day and a half warning.....