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Into the Valley
Ruth Galm’s spare, poetic debut novel, set in the American West of early Joan Didion, traces the drifting path of a young woman caught between generations as she skirts the law and her own oppressive anxiety.
Into the Valley opens on the day in July 1967 when B. decides to pass her first counterfeit check and flee San Francisco for the Central Valley. Unmarried at 30, B. doesn't understand the youth counterculture but doesn't fit into her mother's world of dresses and kid gloves.
B. is beset by a disintegrative anxiety she calls “the carsickness,” and the only relief comes in handling illicit checks and driving endlessly through the valley. As she travels the bare, anonymous landscape, meeting an array of other characters—an alcoholic professor, a bohemian teenage girl, a criminal admirer—B.’s flight becomes that of a woman unraveling, a person lost between who she is and who she cannot yet be.
Into the Valley opens on the day in July 1967 when B. decides to pass her first counterfeit check and flee San Francisco for the Central Valley. Unmarried at 30, B. doesn't understand the youth counterculture but doesn't fit into her mother's world of dresses and kid gloves.
B. is beset by a disintegrative anxiety she calls “the carsickness,” and the only relief comes in handling illicit checks and driving endlessly through the valley. As she travels the bare, anonymous landscape, meeting an array of other characters—an alcoholic professor, a bohemian teenage girl, a criminal admirer—B.’s flight becomes that of a woman unraveling, a person lost between who she is and who she cannot yet be.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2015
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453 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
September 22, 2015
I received a copy of this from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
I have to admit, I took the bait. Compare a current writer to Joan Didion and I'll probably try her. Joan, maybe, maybe not. I guess I can see it in the scarcity of the prose, the short sentences, but not in how she writes people. The setting is California but B. is leaving the city, so over it, struggling with nausea that only abates when she scams a bank.
B. is a very interesting character and atypical. Probably insane. She has a lot of class, wearing stockings and pumps and very nice dresses in an era where women have straggly hair and holey jeans. She is offended by the direction of the world. But then you realize she isn't showering, that her dresses are stained, that she hardly sleeps or eat and this is all not normal.
If you want a true author comparison, pick up Patricia Highsmith and stick her in a mustang (scammed) with this wilting beauty (who smells like sweat) and send her down the highway.
Discussed on Episode 039 of the Reading Envy podcast.
I have to admit, I took the bait. Compare a current writer to Joan Didion and I'll probably try her. Joan, maybe, maybe not. I guess I can see it in the scarcity of the prose, the short sentences, but not in how she writes people. The setting is California but B. is leaving the city, so over it, struggling with nausea that only abates when she scams a bank.
B. is a very interesting character and atypical. Probably insane. She has a lot of class, wearing stockings and pumps and very nice dresses in an era where women have straggly hair and holey jeans. She is offended by the direction of the world. But then you realize she isn't showering, that her dresses are stained, that she hardly sleeps or eat and this is all not normal.
If you want a true author comparison, pick up Patricia Highsmith and stick her in a mustang (scammed) with this wilting beauty (who smells like sweat) and send her down the highway.
Discussed on Episode 039 of the Reading Envy podcast.
August 28, 2015
I wanted to love this. I really did. Put any woman in a vintage car, push her out into a landscape story, and make her an outlaw, and I'm in. But the prose wasn't remarkable enough for me to make the quiet journey worth it, the dialog and relationships didn't work for me, and the constant time allotted to the narrator's nausea seemed like wasted space to me. Still, a promising writer with interesting ideas and a talent for writing the landscape with more to come, I'm sure.
March 19, 2016
This book was easy to read, quirky, and interesting. I never knew where it would go next and that kept me reading.
June 14, 2015
Thirty-year-old B finds that by cashing false checks in Central Valley banks, pristine and remote, she is able to quell the overwhelming nausea that has always plagued her. Abruptly abandoning her meager life in a San Francisco now lousy with unsettling leather-clad hippies, B drives endlessly from bank to bank, breathlessly circumventing obstacles and hangers-on, gradually soiling the same ivory dress and bone-colored pumps. Author Ruth Galm tweaks Camus in this totally mesmerizing existential novel, and just when I thought existential novels couldn't be written anymore. I slid this advanced reader's copy off the Soho Press table at Book Expo '15. Look for this in August--or get me to send you my copy.
July 15, 2024
Initially, we think the novel is about this: a lost woman, single and 30 in the mid 1960s, struggles with the changing mores of the time.
B (formerly Beverly) is a study in contrasts; she’s something of a blonde bombshell, we gather from the way men interact with her; she’s a secretary who looks aghast at her colleagues if they come into work in the summer without stockings; she goes to the occasional Conservative Young People’s cocktail parties. But she loathes the people there, the people you would have thought someone like her would admire, preferring the company of a jailbird thief she’s been dating. And she’s just garnered a fortune of sorts, enough to buy her a new car and an escape, driving out west.
She has no one. Her mother, having failed her so many times over, has moved away, now just a voice on the phone offering her unwanted woman to woman advice, try this scent, find a man with a good job, never a word of substance or love. B. drives through open, flat vistas, trying not to think of her. Trying not to think of anything really. She has a sheath of fraudulent checks that keep her company.
While one sees quickly nothing good is likely to come of this, the opening chapters pulled me in. But as B. unravels, so does the novel. She is too carsick, endlessly nauseous, to feel much of anything else, a jolt of being alive briefly lifting her every time she cashes another bad check. But soon enough it’s just the highway unspooling under her wheels, the glare and sweat of the day. The original promise of her struggle with The Times, those confusing 60s where women were frequently slotted into the life of a suburban housewife in itchy polyester, or a hippie freak in denim and feathers, slips away, rising only in cliches (much like the ones I just offered). Any soul searching on the part of B. is obliterated by the beating sun.
She has two brief, upsetting encounters with others she meets on the road, a man who takes advantage of her, and a sour flower girl who is somehow worse. The novel is so interior that during B’s awful time with the guy who picked her up, she’s lost in disassociation, mourning. “Nothing feels safe … the banks do … but nothing else…” as the loathsome older man beside her pleasures himself on the couch. They could just as well have been on separate planets, remaining so even as he carries her off into his bedroom.
The hitchhiker she picks up and holds onto for much too long speaks to her with loathing and disdain. Does B. even hear her? She’s having a slow climbing nervous breakdown. The days are overpowered by the white light, the emptiness of the blacktop. Night is a series of sagging motels.
This is not a novel to read for plot. It’s a hot, dusty mirage of discomfort. And while there is a sharp, sudden turn in the road near the end, a stab of violence that almost feels like lust, Into the Valley is ultimately a difficult read, headache inducing, even as one feels something shadowy and lingering for B. That said, the novel depressed me so badly that I felt a wave of relief upon returning it to the library. Like I’d escaped the car to nowhere I’d been held captive in, and the driver had never noticed.
B (formerly Beverly) is a study in contrasts; she’s something of a blonde bombshell, we gather from the way men interact with her; she’s a secretary who looks aghast at her colleagues if they come into work in the summer without stockings; she goes to the occasional Conservative Young People’s cocktail parties. But she loathes the people there, the people you would have thought someone like her would admire, preferring the company of a jailbird thief she’s been dating. And she’s just garnered a fortune of sorts, enough to buy her a new car and an escape, driving out west.
She has no one. Her mother, having failed her so many times over, has moved away, now just a voice on the phone offering her unwanted woman to woman advice, try this scent, find a man with a good job, never a word of substance or love. B. drives through open, flat vistas, trying not to think of her. Trying not to think of anything really. She has a sheath of fraudulent checks that keep her company.
While one sees quickly nothing good is likely to come of this, the opening chapters pulled me in. But as B. unravels, so does the novel. She is too carsick, endlessly nauseous, to feel much of anything else, a jolt of being alive briefly lifting her every time she cashes another bad check. But soon enough it’s just the highway unspooling under her wheels, the glare and sweat of the day. The original promise of her struggle with The Times, those confusing 60s where women were frequently slotted into the life of a suburban housewife in itchy polyester, or a hippie freak in denim and feathers, slips away, rising only in cliches (much like the ones I just offered). Any soul searching on the part of B. is obliterated by the beating sun.
She has two brief, upsetting encounters with others she meets on the road, a man who takes advantage of her, and a sour flower girl who is somehow worse. The novel is so interior that during B’s awful time with the guy who picked her up, she’s lost in disassociation, mourning. “Nothing feels safe … the banks do … but nothing else…” as the loathsome older man beside her pleasures himself on the couch. They could just as well have been on separate planets, remaining so even as he carries her off into his bedroom.
The hitchhiker she picks up and holds onto for much too long speaks to her with loathing and disdain. Does B. even hear her? She’s having a slow climbing nervous breakdown. The days are overpowered by the white light, the emptiness of the blacktop. Night is a series of sagging motels.
This is not a novel to read for plot. It’s a hot, dusty mirage of discomfort. And while there is a sharp, sudden turn in the road near the end, a stab of violence that almost feels like lust, Into the Valley is ultimately a difficult read, headache inducing, even as one feels something shadowy and lingering for B. That said, the novel depressed me so badly that I felt a wave of relief upon returning it to the library. Like I’d escaped the car to nowhere I’d been held captive in, and the driver had never noticed.
May 18, 2017
Outstanding. One of the best works of fiction I've read in years. The scenes created are very Steinbeckesque while remaining wholly original with no sense of imitation. Galm creates time and place in such a way that a final word can drive an entire passage into the core of your knowing that is unnerving in its ability to hit your soul with exacting precision. Galm is that rare find of an artist who uses words to paint a picture in your mind that no painter could every create for your eyes. She reminds you that writing at its best is fine art.
June 7, 2016
I devoured this atmospheric and captivating novel. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a compelling psychological drama.
September 4, 2015
Existential road novel set in 1967. A young woman suffering from a kind of persistent nausea finds temporary relief only in cashing false checks at a series of banks as she departs San Francisco for the Valley (Joan Didion country, as some reviewers have said). The cool orderliness of the banks soothes her. What upsets her? The pressure to conform (marry), but also hippie youth in their overt freedom from traditional feminine constraints.
The novel has an abstract feel, a bit like a Tom McCarthy novel. I've never read Nausea by Sartre and wonder if there's a connection there. I was also reminded just a bit of an old indie film that put Kerry Washington on the map, Lift. The book also reminded me a little of The Price of Salt by Highsmith, and fans of that novel may enjoy this one. I also think there will be Mad Men fans who like this, especially fans invested in Peggy, as there's a feminist streak to the book that is one of its strengths.
The voice drew me in initially, and the minimalist prose matches the spare setting of life on the road in rural territory, and I'm intrigued to see what Galm writes next. But the protagonist B. is often alone and the heart of the story concerns her interior dynamics, her strange pathology, her compulsion, and her condition ultimately isn't quite mysterious enough or developed enough. At times it felt a bit schematic and over-articulated. Still, I feel Galm is onto something and hope she keeps writing.
(Lastly, a quibble: people usually didn't pump their own gas in 1967.)
The novel has an abstract feel, a bit like a Tom McCarthy novel. I've never read Nausea by Sartre and wonder if there's a connection there. I was also reminded just a bit of an old indie film that put Kerry Washington on the map, Lift. The book also reminded me a little of The Price of Salt by Highsmith, and fans of that novel may enjoy this one. I also think there will be Mad Men fans who like this, especially fans invested in Peggy, as there's a feminist streak to the book that is one of its strengths.
The voice drew me in initially, and the minimalist prose matches the spare setting of life on the road in rural territory, and I'm intrigued to see what Galm writes next. But the protagonist B. is often alone and the heart of the story concerns her interior dynamics, her strange pathology, her compulsion, and her condition ultimately isn't quite mysterious enough or developed enough. At times it felt a bit schematic and over-articulated. Still, I feel Galm is onto something and hope she keeps writing.
(Lastly, a quibble: people usually didn't pump their own gas in 1967.)
September 17, 2015
Into the Valley is a debut novel by Ruth Galm that chronicles the adventure of B., a thirty year old woman who wanders through 1970s California, trying to assuage a "carsickness" that plagues her thoughts. B. is unable to cope with the coarseness of the present world, yet rejects the traditional binds of the past. This tension is an interesting dichotomy throughout the novel, although it is never resolved at the end. The ending was surprising, but it left me hanging. Into the Valley reminds me more of a collection of individual narratives than a cohesive plot. Nevertheless, the novel was beautifully written and I found it hard to put down. The characterization of B. is excellent - the author represents her as an eccentric and neuroatypical itinerant. Written in raw, haunting prose, Galm's exceptional use of unreliable narration and stunning portrayal of California in the 1970s leaves an indelible mark in the reader's mind. I would recommend this book to anyone craving a dreamy, existential read.
June 26, 2022
Wow. What a ride. Restores my faith that there are still new and bold voices that I want to read.
For some reason reading Into the Valley, got me thinking of the opening short story in Bonnie Jo Campbell's collection American Salvage titled The Trespasser. I've read this story over and over - so much so that I never quite get around to reading the rest of the stories in the collection.
For some reason reading Into the Valley, got me thinking of the opening short story in Bonnie Jo Campbell's collection American Salvage titled The Trespasser. I've read this story over and over - so much so that I never quite get around to reading the rest of the stories in the collection.
July 4, 2016
The publisher's description doesn't quite do this book justice. It makes it sound much more conventional than it really is. Wonderful prose and carefully, minutely observed settings make this novel a pleasure to read, but the real achievement here is the outstanding depiction of the main character's gradual but definite unraveling. A haunting, memorable reading experience.
October 14, 2015
What sky is that B. - the one which wheels many moons?
Or is it sinister, an apocalyptic asteroid, to strike, to melt the stars?
Swindle days and days, outlaw you, a posse rides the barren-scape,
Sadness is your smile, yesterday eyes, the all of you is cast too far.
Chris Roberts
Or is it sinister, an apocalyptic asteroid, to strike, to melt the stars?
Swindle days and days, outlaw you, a posse rides the barren-scape,
Sadness is your smile, yesterday eyes, the all of you is cast too far.
Chris Roberts
July 15, 2015
Oh the writing! You can feel, smell, taste, hear and see everything in this story. Beautiful!
July 25, 2019
Into the valley chronicles the main character's struggle with anxiety, addiction and, her descent into madness. Set in the late 1960's California, B doesn't want to be put into a box. She fights against the expectations of her mother's generation and struggles with accepting the free bohemian lifestyle that's emerging around her. To curb an extreme anxiety she refers to as "carsickness" she turns to anti-climatic bank robberies that blossom into full fledge addiction.
I picked 'Into the Valley' because it takes place in the month of July, it's July currently and I was in between books. It's ok. It was a hard read because like the desolate valley it takes place in nothing much happens. She does a bunch of things, she meets a handful of people. Some of them have an impact on her, most of them don't. So in a way I suppose this was a good character study in depression. The summary sounds exciting but like B, we'd rather take a nap under some tree in the sun and wait for it to pass. Except you wake up and you're still under the tree but now your shoes are dirty. The book waited until page 230 to have something happen and you'd think as reader the rest was build up but it just kind of happens. It could very well have not and then it's over.
I picked 'Into the Valley' because it takes place in the month of July, it's July currently and I was in between books. It's ok. It was a hard read because like the desolate valley it takes place in nothing much happens. She does a bunch of things, she meets a handful of people. Some of them have an impact on her, most of them don't. So in a way I suppose this was a good character study in depression. The summary sounds exciting but like B, we'd rather take a nap under some tree in the sun and wait for it to pass. Except you wake up and you're still under the tree but now your shoes are dirty. The book waited until page 230 to have something happen and you'd think as reader the rest was build up but it just kind of happens. It could very well have not and then it's over.
March 28, 2018
B. is such a unique character. In this book we follow her as she drives around the American Southwest trying to escape her "carsickness," an anxiety that has followed her throughout her life. The only thing that helps her now is passing fake checks in cool, orderly banks. She isn't really afraid of being caught, and this demeanor rubs off on the reader, too. It just seems right that she won't be caught, since she's already so in her head, it doesn't feel like anything truly bad can happen. Even when some unfortunate things occur, B. is never really upset, just completely engrossed in her carsickness.
October 31, 2016
B. is a troubled woman. I think that's the best way I can describe it. The entire book, I was trying to understand what she was running away from - she was avidly searching for something; something that would release her from the thinly veiled wall of anxiety that threatened to take over her brain and render her completely unable to focus or truly live. But I still don't truly know what she was running away from. I am quite puzzled as I finish this book.
March 4, 2024
This book is written with intelligence and with an understanding of what it is like to be someone who is losing their grip on reality. Once you start to follow the main character on her journey into the valley, you can't put the book down until you ultimately know how it ends! Ruth has put out an amazing first book, can't wait to read what she publishes next!
August 20, 2019
B. is a disturbed lady on a journey to nowhere in the late 60s. The stark California landscape matches the author’s sparse language. I was along for the ride from the first counterfeit check. The ending left questions unanswered but at that point the reader can surmise what will happen next.
March 31, 2024
A quick read that left you guessing which road “B” would go down next. However, the pages spent writing about her carsickness took up 1/2 the book and could have been used for more adventures in her Mustang.
April 17, 2018
It what a great story! And I love the idea of her driving daily to a non destination. The ending was disappointingly odd though..still wish there was more of an explanation.
August 22, 2022
Listened to this on an awful, awful day but the book itself was fine.
March 26, 2023
Ruth Galm's gripping slow-burn treatise on mid-century femininity at a crossroads is a tense, enigmatic, unsettling character study with a chilling, wonderfully satisfying conclusion.
March 24, 2017
I didn't mind the author's style of writing, but I couldn't get on board with the plot or characters.
December 28, 2020
I enjoyed this book. First person narrative 30-year-old woman not finding her place in 1960’s. Describes her journey to madness while riding through little towns in her Mustang. Deals with anxiety, addiction and dissatisfaction caused by social pressures and confusion that she is not able to deal with other ways then running away.
August 30, 2015
Too sparse for me. The mysterious B decides to forge some checks and go on the lam. She drives around in California and meets a bunch of characters along the way. Or something.
It sounded like an interesting premise. And initially I was intrigued by the sparseness of the text, but I was soon reminded of why I prefer a story with more detail. It was difficult to care about B., to keep going with the story, to wonder what would happen next or in the end.
There are sections that are intriguing, but they are few and far in between. What is it supposed to be about? Trying to resolve her anxiety? Running away from her past? Is she trying to become a bank robber? What is she looking for?
I'm not really sure and I don't really care. The ending is also totally unsatisfying, but I suppose considering the main character was difficult to get into in the first place, it's not surprising. I liked the concept and I liked the idea of her driving around California, but I just don't care. There is a part of me that wonders if the climax can be interpreted in different ways and whether the "freedom" that is suggested is perhaps not quite what it might be at first glance. Either way I still don't care.
Skip it.
It sounded like an interesting premise. And initially I was intrigued by the sparseness of the text, but I was soon reminded of why I prefer a story with more detail. It was difficult to care about B., to keep going with the story, to wonder what would happen next or in the end.
There are sections that are intriguing, but they are few and far in between. What is it supposed to be about? Trying to resolve her anxiety? Running away from her past? Is she trying to become a bank robber? What is she looking for?
I'm not really sure and I don't really care. The ending is also totally unsatisfying, but I suppose considering the main character was difficult to get into in the first place, it's not surprising. I liked the concept and I liked the idea of her driving around California, but I just don't care. There is a part of me that wonders if the climax can be interpreted in different ways and whether the "freedom" that is suggested is perhaps not quite what it might be at first glance. Either way I still don't care.
Skip it.
August 18, 2015
B. is a character unlike most you've read before. My first immediate impression of her was as Betty Draper. But a Betty who decided she didn't want to get married and have kids, instead finding herself somewhat adrift as cultural norms change in the late 60s.
Turns out, B. is MUCH more complicated than Betty. She's so desperate to escape the sense of anxiety and malaise she calls 'carsickness' she goes on the lam from her life. The only thing that she finds relieves the feeling is to pass bad checks in the cool, calm atmosphere of banks. It's a skill she picks up from a sometimes lover, who comes back in act 3.
The feminist themes are underpinned here by the clothes and aesthetics of the time, which make it lots of fun in addition to being a serious exploration of the ways women were - and in many cases still are - hemmed in by their gender.
It's a great novel with a lot of surprises that will leave you thinking.
Turns out, B. is MUCH more complicated than Betty. She's so desperate to escape the sense of anxiety and malaise she calls 'carsickness' she goes on the lam from her life. The only thing that she finds relieves the feeling is to pass bad checks in the cool, calm atmosphere of banks. It's a skill she picks up from a sometimes lover, who comes back in act 3.
The feminist themes are underpinned here by the clothes and aesthetics of the time, which make it lots of fun in addition to being a serious exploration of the ways women were - and in many cases still are - hemmed in by their gender.
It's a great novel with a lot of surprises that will leave you thinking.
October 29, 2015
Full disclosure, I grew up with the author...
That being said, I just finished the novel (for the 2nd time after reading an earlier manuscript copy in 2013), it is is fantastic. It is a very well-told story, I was engaged early on and never stopped wanting to understand where the protagonist B was going.
I think the author nailed the temporal space, really brought out the CA Valley in the descriptions; just kept pressing poor B out there in the mental landscape trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. In a sense this is a character study, a geography study and a lamentation of loss of place in a world turned upside down by political and culture wars.
You should read this!
That being said, I just finished the novel (for the 2nd time after reading an earlier manuscript copy in 2013), it is is fantastic. It is a very well-told story, I was engaged early on and never stopped wanting to understand where the protagonist B was going.
I think the author nailed the temporal space, really brought out the CA Valley in the descriptions; just kept pressing poor B out there in the mental landscape trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. In a sense this is a character study, a geography study and a lamentation of loss of place in a world turned upside down by political and culture wars.
You should read this!
January 9, 2016
This book was intriguing. The cataloging info lists it as "psychological fiction" which may be a category I haven't ventured into very much. B. is caught between the beginnings of the hippies and the end of gloves and MRS degrees. That is an intriguing era. She's 30 years old and unmarried and plagued by something she calls carsickness. The only thing that calms her is the atmosphere of a bank as she passes bad checks. It is a weird premise but it somehow works as she sets off on a road trip through the dried up California rural areas.
It's haunting, puzzling, disturbing, but strangely we feel for the character despite her faults and actions. Definitely worth a read.
It's haunting, puzzling, disturbing, but strangely we feel for the character despite her faults and actions. Definitely worth a read.
August 22, 2015
Powerful, uncanny, disturbing, and weirdly vindicating, too, in a vicarious sort of way. Whoever's review mentioned Betty Draper on the lam was spot on. A lot of unflinching honesty here, and i really found the narrative voice and dissociated structure to be perfect for the story/character. Disaffected woman on a solitary vision quest, of sorts--a story i wish i'd read more versions of. Yet it's good to have at lest discovered this one.
September 10, 2015
Utterly bizarre from start to finish, but main character B.’s crippling anxiety is portrayed well. The existential crisis of being an unmarried woman yearning for and shying away from both the traditional and counterculture paths available to women in the 1960′s pushes B. to escape to Option C instead.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews