Death Valley
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
'Riotously original ... A triumph' NEW YORK TIMES
'A journey unlike any you've read before' NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH
'Her most profound book yet ... Surreal, hysterical and beguiling in every sense' GLAMOUR
The most profound book yet from the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.
A woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow - for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike.
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.
This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death Valley.
PRAISE FOR THE PISCES
'Of all the books that I read this summer I think this was my absolute favourite. It really blew me away' DOLLY ALDERTON
'Frank, provocative and brilliant' INDEPENDENT
'Hilarious, poignant, sexy. A brilliant story about why we crave connection and how to find ourselves' ELLE
'Laugh-out-loud funny' i
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the infectious and dreamy latest from Broder (Milk Fed), a Los Angeles woman finds new ways to deal with anxiety and depression after discovering a fantastical giant cactus in the California desert. The unnamed narrator, a 40-something married novelist coping with her father's recent car accident and his continued stay in the ICU, takes a solo road trip for some relief. She checks into a Best Western hotel in Death Valley, Calif., telling herself the excursion will also help inspire her novel in progress, which she expects to feature a desert-based epiphany. While hiking on a trail near the hotel, she sees a towering cactus and passes through a portal on its surface. Inside, she encounters a five-year-old version of her father and comforts him. It's a funhouse warping of the care she misses from her dad, which she hasn't had since she was a child. Later, in between successive hikes to the cactus, she has brief FaceTime calls with her father in the hospital and with her husband, and continues to feel distant from both men. During the fourth hike, she gets lost and learns to summon her survival instincts. Despite the novel's intense interiority, Broder's narrator is consistently companionable; the story works because she enjoys talking to herself, a personality quirk Broder finds clever ways to convey ("I am overextended and cannot fulfill your request at this time. Best, me," she imagines writing to herself as an away message). Readers ought not to miss this magical tale of survival.
