The Absolutes
Published July 11, 2023
A scorching, suspenseful, unflinchingly honest novel about a young woman’s affair with an Italian aristocrat that leaves her spiraling in the face of love, danger, and obsession.
"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
“The deep, messy complexities of desire are on full view in The Absolutes....The Absolutes asks you to consider what matters more: the moment the stone is dropped into the pool or the ripples that spread across the surface long after the stone has sunk out of sight. Either answer could be right."
— Kristin Arnett, Washington Post
"Molly Dektar can write like hell. [The Absolutes] is simply ravishing."
— Melissa Febos
"Read this. Right now."
— Brandon Taylor
The Absolutes makes a strong case for the unreliability of any narrator caught up in romantic obsession… An intense loneliness both consumes and compels the narrator. A Gothic tinge and carefully drawn, elite atmosphere bring to mind Donna Tartt and make Nora’s narration especially fun.
— The Observer
"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
“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
"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."
— Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White
“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
“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. I mean, wow.”
— Melissa Febos
“Read this. Right now.”
— Brandon Taylor
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. They forge a sudden, powerful connection and a reckless feeling takes hold of Nora: blind trust and insatiable desire.
Years later in New York, chance brings them together, and the two begin an affair. But Nora is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when unrelenting currents of obsession, control, and revenge entangle her in a secret plot to overthrow Nicola’s corrupt father. Soon, she must decide for herself what makes a person truly evil and what she’s willing to excuse for a chance at total intimacy.
Utterly seductive, fiercely intelligent, and achingly beautiful, The Absolutes is a revealing portrait of a relationship that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Molly Dektar has crafted a hypnotic, provocative, and profound study of desire.
