Death Valley

by Melissa Broder, Chiara Manfrinato (Translator)

Per concludere il suo romanzo ambientato nel deserto, una donna si mette in viaggio, alla volta di una cittadina nel Mojave Desert. Il romanzo, però, è solo un pretesto. In realtà lei sta scappando, dal padre amatissimo che è finito in terapia intensiva dopo un incidente d’auto, e dal marito che combatte contro una malattia misteriosa che lo consuma. La donna è in fuga anche e soprattutto da se stessa, da un senso di vuoto che non le dà tregua. Trovato rifugio in un anonimo e confortevole Best Western, durante un’escursione si imbatte in un cactus gigantesco, sul cui fusto nota un ampio squarcio. Incuriosita, non può fare a meno di oltrepassare quella soglia. Dentro il cactus vive un’esperienza mistica che la riconnette al padre e al marito e ai suoi desideri, e ne esce così trasformata da volerci tornare. Ma pensando di aver imparato a memoria la strada per raggiungere quella pianta magica, si perde nel deserto, e il viaggio si trasforma in un’allucinata lotta per la sopravvivenza. Death Valley è la storia di una donna che di fronte alla malattia si sottrae al ruolo di cura, ma anche a quello di testimone impotente del declino dei suoi cari. Melissa Broder torna con un romanzo intriso di umorismo e umanità, dove la fuga dalle paure più indicibili diventa comica e visionaria, e l’amore è sentimento e azione, desiderio e nostalgia, la stella che guida il cammino anche nelle notti più buie.

Questo libro è per chi ruba penna e taccuino negli hotel, per chi crea playlist interminabili per scongiurare la fine delle cose, per chi avverte su di sé la benevola indifferenza della luna, e per chi in uno sguardo sorridente trova una quiete orchestrale, musica e silenzio insieme, come l’oceano agitato in superficie ma imperturbabile in profondità.

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Fantasy, Audiobook, Book Club

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2023

About the author

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems and LAST SEXT.

Her books have been translated in over ten languages.

She lives in Los Angeles.

www.melissabroder.com

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book has EVERYTHING. desert survival. best western. hospice care. being breastfed via dr. pepper bottle by the ghost of your dying father. talking rocks. cacti. metaphors. bathroom humor. an exploration of what it means to love someone who is dying, and if that applies to all love and all people. fast casual dining. hotel employees described like veggie tales characters. oldies.

https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...

it's the beach read of the century as far as i'm concerned.

bottom line: melissa broder stans stand up!!!

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

it’s aight

[Melissa ~ Bantering Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew what I was getting into with Death Valley. Melissa Broder is known for her unique writing voice, so I was prepared for whatever madness was headed my way. And while there are a few things I didn’t like about the book – namely, the occasional bathroom humor and an abuse of parentheticals – I appreciated it for its thought-provoking insight.

Broder takes death and grief, depression, and the need for parental approval and rolls it all into a fever-dream tale of an unnamed woman fleeing to the California desert to escape her life. Her father is in the ICU and her husband is ill, and she’s also trying to finish a novel – a lot is on her plate. So when she encounters a gigantic cactus on a desert trail with an opening slashed into its side, she enters it. And thus begins a journey that is at once emotional and funny, existential and life-threatening, and totally absurd.

Broder says a lot in Death Valley, and though she’s a very intellectual writer, she frames her complexity in accessible language and avoids a highbrow style. She doesn’t go on and on, either. She makes her point and moves to the next.

And her observations are so astute. She points out how it’s impossible to outrun a feeling because the feeling is inside you, and since you take yourself with you when you run, the feeling goes with you. That love isn’t always an emotion, sometimes it’s a verb. And what’s so frightening about existing is that life never stops for you but it does end, and then it continues to go on without you.

There’s so much good stuff here. So much to think about. I’ll be mulling it over for days.


My sincerest appreciation to Melissa Broder, Scribner, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry in advance.

I love mess, but I can’t with this one. I don’t want to be harsh, but there’s something about this novel that felt “first draft” to me. It’s unfocused, scattershot, and if I’m being honest, immature. I’m a Broder fan, so it pains me to admit that her new one was an absolute dud for me, and dare I say: a bore.

I won’t say it’s all bad the entire way through. There were certain sections that really cut deep into me. As someone who for the past year watched my father slowly dying, there were several observations that really got under my skin. And a few things that Broder got right, or at least stuff that I could heavily relate to. Ie: some of the not so great stuff that you’re faced with when dealing with someone’s sickness and/or potential death: The frustration of the illness, the exasperation at being someone’s caretaker, the guilt you feel when you focus more on your own feelings instead of the person who’s actually going through the sickness, and then the even more monumental guilt you feel when you realize you keep making it about yourself. All of those points hit, and they hit hard, and they cut deep. So, I’m not bashing the book for bashing sake, there’s loads to admire here.

This novel’s structure is reminiscent of THE PISCES where the first half coddles you into thinking it’s one kind of story, and then the second half slams you into batshit crazy territory. But while THE PISCES’ surrealist turn is a welcome surprise, and makes an already unique book an even more delicious experience, DEATH VALLEY’s story/structure/approach/execution are all severely lacking. So much in this book lacks depth. It’s like the narrative is playing ping pong to see what sticks.

The first half tries to create setup, but every character, including our main character, is a one dimensional stick figure. I have no sense of what makes any of these people tick. They all have basic personality traits. The second half becomes a horny Western epic and it loses its way even more. Broder is all about using absurdism in her novels, and I love that about her writing, but here, the absurdity comes across as juvenile. And there were several moments I felt like I was reading jokes/plot points coming from a third-grader (Exhibit A: The talking rocks). For a book with a short page count, it’s laborious to read.

As I mentioned before, there is stuff to like in this one (discussions on suffering, the meta quality between Broder and her protagonist), but overall, this novel needed to be labored over a lot more: more rough drafts, more characterization, even more page counts. There’s a really good story in here, but everything felt so superficial, sporadic, and shallow. Pass.

Obviously, I’m not giving up on Broder, THE PISCES and MILK FED go hard, so I’m hoping the next one will bring back the magic. I guess our faves gotta have a miss one in a while.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

existential horny cactus western 🏜️

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caught in the farcical performance of the self, we can either laugh or cry as we plunge headlong into the waves of grief to seek ourselves, and Melissa Broder illuminates such an introspective adventure in all its bold, messy glory in Death Valley, the authors third novel. Its a story of a cactus and a retreat into the Mojave Desert that spirals into surrealism and profound introspection, a story of talking rocks and riding giant birds, all accomplished without the use of peyote. ‘If I saw no humour in my unraveling,’ states Broder’s adrift and anguished narrator, ‘I'd have been dead long ago.’ This wry blend of philosophical intrigue and self-effacing humor was the ideal hook to snare and reel me through the fast-flowing river of plot and introspective musings, treading the whole spectrum of emotions along with the endearingly caustic narrator of Death Valley. Sure, perhaps she isn’t endearing to everyone but the “everything is garbage, I’m probably the problem, but I’m going to get through this even if I gotta get sloppy as shit” is a vibe that speaks to me on a real level and sounds like someone I know…

Broder sent me on a great surreal summer adventure here and this book has fully engulfed my mind and soul into a state of self-reflective existential anxiety as a therapeutic process. Because facing the comically bleak ways we may botch a life and reading someone else process that makes this old world feel a lot less lonely. This is a tale of the many threads of grief that we can become entangled within, of the superstitions that flicker in our minds as we hold hold they can be candles in the darkness of our pain. It is a close look at issues of disability and death. It is a love letter to Best Western hotels and their take out breakfast. But it is also a tale of love, acceptance, and overcoming even the greatest obstacles that mortality can toss at us across this vast empty universe. Because, like this book falling into my hands, finding your peace amidst the beleaguerment of brutal fate makes the universe feel a lot less lonely with those you hold dear. A rip-roaring, surrealistic and wonderfully whimsical romp through the deserts of our days that also happens to be set lost in an actual desert looking for a mythical cactus, Death Valley is as fun and philosophical as it is fine crafted and hard hitting.

‘If I’m honest, I came to escape a feeling—an attempt that’s already going poorly, because unfortunately I’ve brought myself with me, and I see, as the last pink light creeps out to infinity, that I am still the kind of person who makes another person’s coma all about me.’

A desire to do and to be good often ushers in existential anxieties and despairs when confronted with our insecurities of inauthenticity. In the face of an anxious society hellbent on dehumanization and under the massive weight of grief, the plucky narrator of Death Valley is nothing but herself, fears, flaws and all. Which is befitting as Broder is also unapologetically herself here, weaving a poignant patchwork of narrative, introspective analysis, and whimsical, philosophical asides in short, staccato chapters filled with magical realism and comically scathing self-help soliloquies. Having captured a loving cult following with her poetry, Broder’s polished prose shines with an impressive fluidity capable of seamlessly sashaying between broad observational insights to personal self-reflection or between the mundane and the seemingly magical surrealistic elements. It all makes for a rather infectious novel that lures you in then sends you soaring through the emotional twists and turns that tugs at the heart strings while simultaneously inspiring laughter. We are strapped in for a ride with the narrator as she sends us on a thrill ride of family grief in light of her father’s hospitalization and her husband’s debilitating medical history. Yet amidst a need for others to heal, she finds she’s been avoiding doing any healing herself.

‘Some path in some desert in some life. And this is the part of the life where I am lost in the desert. But the world is round and covered in oceans. So why am I here?
I’m here because I put myself here…because my father. Because illness. Because my husband. Because avoidance.’

While this may sound like a familiar formula—woman goes on retreat only to retreat into herself to find herself—Broder keeps this fresh and endlessly unexpected and while reading it I was as thirsty for more as the narrator was thrusting for water in the desert (both the literal desert and the metaphorical desert of her life at that). And Broder delivers page after page without flagging, keeping it consistently thought provoking while pushing the plot forward as the grasp on reality begins to slip as opening herself to vulnerability allows the surrealism of repressed emotions to come roaring to the surface.

‘This is why I write. I do it for the alchemy. I cannot just experience things. This is how I experience things.’

The search for self-authenticity tends to require some long hard looks inward. The unapologetic delivery of the narrator’s self-assessments make for some great laughs (and constantly ran ink from my pen writing “RELATABLE!” in the margins) with lines like ‘sometimes when a person who loves me expresses care, I feel oppressed,’ or her observation that ‘people are such a commitment. I would "reach out" more often if everyone promised not to check in again later.’ As someone who likes my space, reader, I cackled. Yet the aspects of authenticity take on deeper, more existential levels, exacerbated by the human conditions that cause us to talk past one another or struggle to meet others needs when we can’t even meet our owm. ‘This is the problem with human relationships,’ she observes, ‘you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another.’ How are we to connect and care when we float between different emotional realities? How much care can we offer when we ourselves need care?

‘How can I want my husband when he’s always right there? To want what you have. It’s like a puzzle.’

Authenticity in love is a central force around which the emotional debris of the novel rotates, chunks occasionally crashing down like a comet to bruise the ego upon impact. She loves her husband so if the limitations imposed by his illness becomes bothersome, does that mean she’s failed to love? Is wanting her husband as he was while healthy a betrayal of the sick husband of the present? And what of her father isolated in his coma, how does one rationalize the grief of the present with the whole scope of a person? Broder delves into what feels like standard self-help fare on the surface, but each instance laces together to create a broad and insightful undercurrent of theme on all the subtle or replacement ways we attempt to demonstrate or receive love while also questioning what that means about us.

‘Since my husband got sick, my words don't mean what they are supposed to mean. I can't say exactly what I'm thinking, so I use words that signify kindness as substitutes for more complex feelings. A multiplicity of meanings underlies the phrase I love you, which I say at least nine times a day. The phrase can mean anything from I'm sorry you're suffering to Please stop talking.’

The Five Love Languages, for instance, come up in a rather endearing conversation with Jethra, the beautifully buxom Best Western concierge over whom our narrator occasionally lusts. Do people break character under duress or proximity to death, or are we just misinterpreting their attempts to show love as failing to show it due to our own misconception of their motives. Yet such is the frailty of humans in the face of death.

‘Death. If nothing else: a reprieve from all these heres. Death. A big elsewhere. The biggest elsewhere. Unless, of course, it is another here.’

Where anxieties and death meet we often find people grasping for a sense of control and in Death Valley this leads to a whirlwind of superstitions coupled with self-rationalization. Such as the mother taking liberties with the Yiddish ‘kinehora’ that wards off the evil eye, it becomes a scapegoat for problems in order to box them up under something to blame:

‘Any form of positive thinking is sure to bring the kinehora on. Life getting better? ‘No kinehora.’ Believe you have redeeming value as a human being? ‘Don’t kinehora yourself.’’

Be it the mother’s belief that ordering sweatpants for her husband too early will cause him to die or the narrator’s grappling with the notion of a god, or just a superstitious belief in the healing power of a good Best Western, these superstitions become a way to give logic to the randomness of life, death, and suffering in order to feel a sense of control over it. However these attempts to allow our beliefs to carry us into recovery are revealed to be a hindrance to earnest self-reflection and acceptance, and a late in the novel episode involving a piggyback ride on a hallucinatory bird is interpreted by the narrator as meaning something that is then shown to not be true in reality. The varieties and randomness of the human experience defies simple system of understanding and to accept this is to truly accept life.

‘To shock yourself back to life, to recognize you are alive, is also to accept the shock that you have to die, too.’

Acceptance sounds all fine and dandy in theory, but is a far more daunting hurdle in practice. Sure, just accept your life and roll with it. But Broder reminds us that to accept and recognize that we are alive is to also accept and recognize we will one day die. And our fear of death might be what keeps us from truly living. In her essay How To Not Be Enough from her collection So Sad Today: Personal Essays, Broder discusses how even though she is frequently thinking of death and always keenly aware of its encroachment ‘I still can’t come to terms with the fact that I am actually, definitely going to die one day’ and while ‘this might lead to the realization that I might as well enjoy my one brief life,’ that also makes one feel a larger responsibility over ones actions and attitudes across our limited number of days. This existential quarrel with the self is the heart of the novel, and what better place to grapple with all our worries and woes than…that’s right: the inside of a giant fucking cactus.

‘I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants.’

The looming size of the cactus and its unreliability of presence makes it not all too different from death when you think about it. The cactus is so big ‘it’s like god or Ahab’s whale; I can only see it in parts’ and being ‘drawn to the wound’ marring the side of the cactus teases the idea of a familiarity with the cactus for bearing a physical wound she can quite literally enter and inhabit instead of the metaphysical wounds in herself she can’t seem to open up. But this physical manifestation allows her to do something key: the art of noticing. To notice the details in life is to better notice the details in ourselves and to think about them is to help us reach an acceptance. Its the sort of message Mary Oliver teaches in her poetry. And at the end of the day love might be all we need, sometimes we just need to do some noticing to even recognize it is here.

‘I cross out the word LOVE and write the word IS. They are the same word, love and is, yes, love and is are the same. To be with. To be there. Of all the love languages, I think the greatest is to be there, the greatest of the languages, to be here for, to have been there with. Love.’

There is a tragically beautiful message at work in Death Valley where the moments we feel pushed away might be the moments we are being loved, we just have to do some noticing to feel it.

‘Miraculous what you have done with love. Alone in your own desert. Not alone, but feeling alone, because you were with me, and I did not understand, however much I would have wanted to, however much I tried; I could not understand until I understood (and will forget again if I make it out of here alive).’

Melissa Broder’s Death Valley is a marvelous metaphysical adventure with as much heart as there is dark humor. Masterfully crafted with a fluid prose that effortlessly winds between topics of both internal and external concerns, Broder hits high note after high note through surreal yet sharp wit and writing that both stings and soothes at the same time. Moving beyond the need for reality to tether us to understanding, this book feels like the works of the surrealists for the modern age. Death Valley utterly consumed my heart and mind over the course of the few days I read it and the act of reading this feels like an act of self-care itself. This was my first Melissa Broder but I will be diving right back in for more, she has certainly won me over.

4.5/5

'But we don’t pray to change the world (or, in this case, the cactus); we pray to change ourselves.'

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never have I read such an enticing cactus-entering before.

That came out wrong. The lady enters the cactus, not the other–
You know what? Never mind.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘The cactus laughs in silence. Unlike the rocks, I have no voice for it.’

As a huge fan of Melissa Broder it pains me to write this review, but Death Valley has left me deeply dissatisfied. The characters felt like cardboard cutouts, devoid of depth or development. Broder has attempted to weave a complex narrative through their interactions, but instead, their dialogue felt forced and unnatural, failing to evoke any genuine emotion or connection.

While I anticipated a gripping exploration of existential themes against the backdrop of one of nature's most unforgiving landscapes, Death Valley fell short, offering little more than a tedious journey through endless sand and sun. The plot meandered aimlessly, lacking any coherent direction or purpose.

Overall, this was a disappointing read that failed to live up to the caliber of her previous novels. I read a review stating that this novel felt like a first draft and I couldn’t agree more.

Unfortunately I can’t recommend Death Valley. I do however, highly recommend her novels:

The Pisces
Milk Fed.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve enjoyed Melissa Broder’s previous novels The Pisces and Milk Fed , however I found Death Valley quite lacking in comparison. I definitely appreciate how she tackled the experiences of being in an intimate relationship with someone with a chronic illness as well as how portrayed a narrator whose father is ill. As someone who’s dealt with grief I can imagine how these elements of the novel may resonate with folks.

At the same time, I thought this novel lacked a lot of substance. The protagonist enters a cactus and engages in some form of a mythical journey inside of it, idk. I think this component of the novel lowered its quality a lot – I wish Broder had instead written more deeply about the protagonist’s relationship with her father, with her husband, with her sister and mother, and even with herself. The characters felt pretty thin and underdeveloped to me because of all the attention paid to this cactus space trip ordeal. Maybe other people liked that part of the book, though to me it felt avoidant of a more tangible emotional arc for the characters and their relationships with one another. Overall, a swing and a miss for me, though at least it was a fast read.

[verynicebook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Death Valley was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and it pleasantly surprised me. I really had no idea what to expect (though maybe I expected it to be like Milk Fed or The Pisces, but it wasn't like that at all). I found myself initially a little disappointed at first, but the more I read, the more I liked the story and where it took me. So much so that even weeks later, I'm still thinking about it and how it made me feel.

It was magical, surreal, dreamy, and emotional. Melissa Broder's most vulnerable and personal work, in my opinion. Our narrator's struggle to cope with her father and husband's illnesses was heartbreaking to read, and the journey through the hazy, disorienting desert was a trip to say the least. It was a story about survival, about love and about death. Not a lot grows in the desert, when you think about it, it’s where living things go to die - unless you are about to adapt to your surroundings. When you’re fighting (in this case for life), a lot of thoughts pass through your mind in a short period of time and can give you a whole new perspective and outlook on life.

This book felt like a fever dream, and by the end, I was completely invested in it. I wanted to read it again right away because I believe there will be more to discover on a second, or even third, re-read. I hope other people enjoy this book, but don't go in expecting Milk Fed or The Pisces. It's a very different and one-of-a-kind story!

While it was very different than Broder’s other work, Death Valley definitely had the same cadence as her previous books, which I liked, with the same dark humour and wit that I enjoy in her writing. I can’t wait for folks to read this one, I want to talk about it!! Thank you so much to the publisher for the review copy!

[M.L. Rio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this was fucking great

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the first half more than the second. Broder at her most meta so far

3.5

[charly (normalreaders) · Rating 4 out of 5]

i want to crawl inside Melissa Broder’s brain and live there

[Micah Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unlikable white woman gets lost in the desert and has a spiritual awakening and is still unlikable. That’s all you need to know.

[kaylee ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ★

this is the kind of book that should be listened to while high. bc the main character is constantly on a psychedelic trip (not literally) that would just be more enjoyable for readers if they were on one themselves 😭

now, I didn’t dislike this. in fact, for the most part, I enjoyed it. but it was weird. like really weird.

so the premise is that the main character’s life is falling apart. her father is hospitalized (and has already died and been resuscitated twice), and her husband is ill and only declining. so, to escape from all of this, she decides to go out into the desert. once checked in to a best western (which she is oddly hyper-fixated on), she decides to go hiking on a trail recommended by an employee. but on this trail, she stumbles upon a saguaro cactus (which is weird bc they’re not supposed to grow there) and goes inside the cactus. not in a sexual way—although it was described very erotically—but physically inside the cactus.

once inside, she sees different versions of her father and husband (as babies, children, teens, and adults) and repeatedly returns while on her trip. when she eventually decides to leave and return home, she gets lost in the desert and wanders for two days before being found and taken to a hospital (she maintained multiple injuries in her wild travels). this entire journey through the desert was—predictably—very weird, with her conversing with rocks, eating poisonous cacti and facing the too-descriptive consequences, and flying on the back of a huge bird she believes is her recently passed father. (this is only a hint of what’s in this part of the book, there are many other weird and shocking scenes that aren’t as appropriate for general audiences).

and although this was weird and had me sitting gobsmacked multiple times, I enjoyed it enough. the underlying messages about grief, depression, and love were written and addressed well. for example, at the beginning of the story, readers learn that our main character isn’t attracted/doesn’t love her husband as much anymore because of his illness. but after nearly dying in the desert and having a survival-induced epiphany, she realizes what insurmountable strength and love her husband has for her, and what she has done to add to his mental isolation and despair. while it was hard for me to take seriously at times, the messages that are hidden between these bizarre scenes are very meaningful. I can’t say I would hard recommend this book—simply because I don’t think the humor was for me—but I don’t think people shouldn’t read it. if you do, be prepared to be weirded tf out. I can confidently say that I will read the rest of melissa broder’s books, though, if that means anything.

“The word depression is a failure. It evokes pure melancholia and excludes the constellation of other symptoms in a depressive’s internal sky (mine: anxiety; self-hatred; exhaustion; doomy pain globe in chest).”

“It’s always the people you don’t want to be there for you who are there for you.”

“This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another.”

“Sometimes when a person who loves me expresses care, I feel oppressed.”

“My answer to the voice is, I am afraid that I will become nothing.”

“People are such a commitment. I would "reach out" more often if everyone promised not to check in again later.”

~

my first melissa broder book 🫡

[elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

a genuinely wild and bizarre book but also so poignant and heartfelt. this is melissa broder's best yet—a literal fever dream. while incredibly imaginative, it does not skim through the narrator's grief and reckoning with love. one of the biggest problems i have with magical realism is that i sometimes can't grasp the emotions or introspection of the main character/narrator, but broder handled this with ease. throughout the entire book, i felt grounded and was able to empathize with the main character.

just such a stunning book.

full review to come.

thank you scribner for the arc!

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻

pre-read
who am i if i'm not reading multiple books at once these days

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melissa Broder’s novel is a deliberate parody of autofiction which gradually morphs into realms of the fantastical and surreal. Broder’s narrator shares many of Broder’s characteristics: a novelist; a carer for a husband with a chronic illness; sober for many years; and now someone grappling with the possibility her father could be dying. The narrator’s father is in an ICU in LA, after a long vigil she’s made aware her physical presence is no longer needed, so now she’s in a desert town close to Death Valley, officially there to work on her latest book. The narrator’s account is laced with wry humour which mirrors Broder’s own father’s love of sarcasm. For much of the time the narrator is alone, her primary contact with other people consists of texts and video calls, in part a nod to the Covid, lockdown era in which this was conceived.

The narrator checks into a Best Western motel, a place where Broder once meditated while attempting to write an earlier piece of fiction, but also somewhere that serves as a metaphor for aspects of contemporary American culture - with its rich vein of the mass-produced substituting for the authentic. Broder's been dubbed the "high priestess of depression" and her narrator's anguish reflects that title. She's overwhelmed by anxiety and seemingly-intractable, existential dilemmas, which she addresses through Reddit forums, and various forms of "off-the-shelf", spiritual mantras. Through happenstance, and an encounter with a giant, mystical cactus, the narrator is lost in the desert. Isolated and injured, she’s left with her feelings of anticipatory grief, questions about mortality, and intense longing for some higher meaning.

Broder consciously draws on a range of influences from Thomas Bernhard to Edward Abbey but, for me, this often read like a partial send-up of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild with its notion of being lost and then found in nature. Although Broder also seems conflicted, both attracted and repelled by a very similar philosophy, as her narrator’s time in the wilderness forces her to confront her innermost fears and bewildering, personal narratives. In that sense Broder’s novel can seem overshadowed by the kind of quick fix, self-help, pseudo-philosophy I associate, rightly or wrongly, with a certain brand of LA-based creativity. Something I found fascinating mostly because it’s so totally alien to my own experience or ways of thinking. But, despite my rising scepticism, I found the narrator’s situation curiously relatable and often deeply moving, her inner struggles suggesting her story’s not so much a question of finding solace in the readymade or the superficial but a desperate search for tools to deal with loss and with emotional turmoil that would threaten to sink anyone.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Bloomsbury for an ARC

Rating: 3 to 3.5

[leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

in typical melissa broder fashion, her newest release death valley is a fever dream of a novel with a poignant overarching message.

death valley follows an unnamed narrator, a novelist in her forties who is simultaneously trying to cope with her father’s current hospitalisation in the ICU and her husband’s ongoing illness. needing some time alone and seeking inspiration to finish her novel, she checks into a hotel in death valley, embarking on the nearby hiking trails where she finds a towering cactus which seems to have some mystical properties.

i’m not usually one for magical realism/fantasy, but the way the fantastical elements (the cactus portal, the main character having conversations with inanimate objects and her father as a child etc.) were used as a vehicle for the protagonist to explore and process her grief is something i can appreciate. the protagonist’s foray into the desert allows for an exploration of grief, love and loss, death, family, existential dread, father-daughter relationships, empathy and compassion, survival, and of what it means to love someone who is dying. despite these rather existential themes, the novel is still a fast, easy read due to the companionable, witty voice of the narrator, whose humour offers a touch of lightness.

death valley is a strange but vulnerable novel about feeling lost, but going on and surviving anyway.

thank you bloomsbury publishing for the advanced copy! death valley is out in the uk on 24 october 2023

rating: 3.5

[Gabby Humphreys · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the Freud is happening in that horny cactus ?

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always, I loved the prose and the main character (Melissa Broder really writes the best, flawed, wonderfully self-involved characters). I did not love the endless conversations the main character had with inanimate objects and/or animals.

[emma charlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

went out to pho to celebrate my friend and all I could think about was coming home to finish this book

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I sure loved Melissa Broder's surprising, bawdy, funny, psychologically-true The Pisces. I think that maybe I find a bit of kinship in her writing because (and I say this without hubris, believe me, I'm saying it more like a scientist with a pointing stick at a diagram) we do some of the same things. We write about relationships, we use dark humour to unearth serious things, we incorporate a tad of the surreal. (Okay, she might incorporate more than a tad. She has a full fledged merman in The Pisces and in this one, a ginormous cactus in which our protagonist spends time with her father at all stages of his life.) Her writing is also quite compact, which is the feedback I've gotten about my own, from editors.

So, all that to say, there's a certain at-home-ness I feel in her pages. I was pretty excited to get into this one. It started out strong, with the main character, a writer, staying at a Best Western in the Arizona desert, having an existential crisis. Her father is dying, her husband's health is chronically terrible (plus he has constant flatulence which, correct me if I'm wrong, is a major mood killer?), and she's having a hard time coping. I love the Best Western experience she describes, and the staff there, and the hideous breakfast they push on her. All those details are what I love about Broder. I love her interactions with her husband too, even the farting. I was even good with the ginormous (and obviously surreal) cactus she enters (through a "slit", yep, that's Broder!) and evokes the presence of her father.

The book then enters its main gist, which is a walk through the desert gone wrong, and our writer is lost and injured, with no way of contacting anyone, and at the mercy of the elements. For a long, long, long while. And for me, I know it was the whole point of the book, but it sort of lost a bit of steam here. There was only so much I wanted to read about crawling around and not knowing where she was, and being either hot or cold depending on the time of day. I do know it was the point of the book, and it wasn't bad, but it felt somewhat... thin. In fact the book in general did seem short and thin, with most chapters being only a couple pages, with a blank page in between.

Death Valley ends on a strong note, it's lovely and there's a certain enlightenment and softness in the landing (you NEED to be enlightened to live with constant farting, am I right?). And I still am a fan and admirer of her work. She's exploring something totally different here, so it seems unfair to make a comparison, so take this review with a grain or two of salt, but I can't help but long for the experience I had reading The Pisces.

3.5 stars

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

existential, steeped in commentary on grief, beautifully written, fever dream and gross (don't read this if you have daddy issues)

[Rachels_booknook_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you love reading about the desert and people who talk to rocks, this book is for you.

Oh, do you not give an f about cacti? Hopefully you like reading about death, and like a lot of metaphors and spiritual journeys that resemble an extended acid trip.

I do love Broder normally, and I enjoy her sense of humor so it was still middle of the road for me. If only the MC could have epiphanies in a more vibrant setting, like a rainforest. But the symbolism really doesn't work for that, so oh well I guess. The tone was also a lot more somber and I'm not sure it achieved the depth that the messaging was aiming for, but I commend MB for trying something new.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus)]

dnf 50%

i think i can safely say melissa broder's work is not for me. i find her prose obnoxious & swollen. sure, there might be the odd relatable or witty sentence, but she is trying too hard to be quirky & edgy. more often than not her jokes don't land (with me). and she has a tendency to rely on grossness but these raunchy descriptions or asides did not strike me as clever or effectively provocative.

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOoDd9iDT...

A stunning meditation on compassion, grief, love, and survival. A contemporary trip into Wonderland, Death Valley is equal parts funny, heartbreaking, and surreal. It confronts the nuances of anticipatory grief, loss, and the sense of familial obligation head on; it asks: what should grief look like? What is it like to accept our own mortality? What does it mean to die, and what does it mean to truly live? Are the best stories based in our own experiences, or the ones that stem from the depths of our imaginations and hearts? It is an expert exploration which affirms that there is no blueprint for the ways that we process heartbreak, the ways that we grieve not only the dead, but the living who are no longer the ones we remember, we idolize. It is an ode to the evolving, complicated beauty of love, of service, of inspiration, and a call to endure, to survive, even when the void looms just around the corner. Vivid, mesmerizing, and full of painfully, gratifyingly relatable feelings.

[Emma Joy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The 1 star is for me, for finishing this.
I deserve a medal.
I haven't the energy to list all that is boring, self-indulgent, juvenile, and frankly lacking in anything merit worthy.
Thank goodness it was short, or it would have been my first abandoned book.

Just read something else.

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook. It's a weird, magical realism (I think) sort of novel the discusses grief and is sometimes funny but was a story that was compelling and rather unique.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Broder is such a breath of fresh air - whether you enjoy her weird stories or not, you can always rely on her to serve something totally unique in her books.
I feel like the topic of grief is something that’s been addressed a LOT in fiction recently, to the point where i’ve started avoiding it. however, the way it’s done here is so refreshing and raw. it’s told with a brand of surrealist humor that I was totally on board with, and it lends itself to a certain fever dream-like quality. there’s a lot to unpack within this pretty short book, and i know this is one i’ll have to re-read later this year!

[Hailey Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I too crave the fatherly love (Melissa Broder you’ve done it again you Bitch)