Death Valley

Vivienne Pink #1

by Susan Perly

Legendary war photographer Vivienne Pink has five days to photograph servicemen about to deploy for active combat. Racing to meet her deadline, she heads to Las Vegas, where she’ll capture images of men who may die the next day – and where she’ll confront an abuser from her past to force a reckoning. Accompanied by her husband, a celebrated novelist, and her best friend, a former CIA spook, Vivienne heads out into the Nevada desert in search of adrenaline, vengeance and the perfect shot. Told in a vivid, hallucinogenic realism, Death Valley is a sexy, fast-paced tale that’s part Pynchon, part Tarantino.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

312 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2016

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

They drove through the skull of time. Inside the skull, the penetrating light of experiments shone. The skull curved and inside it, dead cows lay with skin hanging. The wool of sheep clung to the wet parts of the skull, floating teeth attached to bone and ate it away, exposing the wire nerves. The world's sand had been heated to glass. They drove along the glass jaw, the flashing nerve highway. This is Nevada, the atomic state.

The blurb for Death Valley refers to the book's style as “hallucinogenic realism”, and as with that opening quote I selected, you're either going to like it or not. As for me, I can't really say that I liked the style – I was often bored and confused – and I was a little turned off by the six degrees of anti-Americanism – at which no one excels like the Canadian intelligentsia – but I do totally respect the literary effort put forth by author Susan Perly; as a war correspondent herself, she has indeed created art (which is always subjective) out of her singular experiences and perspective. I am pleased that this book's appearance on the Giller Prize's longlist this year led me to picking it up, yet I am unsurprised that it didn't become a finalist.

Set in the waning days of 2006, Death Valley recounts a treacherous road trip by a cast of related characters: Vivienne “Baby” Pink is a celebrated photojournalist, under a deadline to shoot some portraits for her next book on soon-to-be-deployed American soldiers; Johnny “Jojo” Coma is her husband, a famous novelist; Val Gold is a government spook, and the long time best friend and roommate of Vivienne and Johnny; Danny Coma (Johnny's brother) is a former diplomat, now a lunatic in a bird suit on the Vegas Strip; and Andy “San Diego” is the young soldier Vivienne chooses to photograph who unwittingly gets tied up in a love triangle as old as the others' friendship. As the characters explore the desert and dunes outside Vegas, the landscape and history of the area allow them to cover the controversial story of 20th century America.

Most prominent in this history are the nuclear bomb tests that took place in the area, and so many connections web out from these tests to other events that it makes the brain spin: ie., this is from where the city of Los Angeles first stole their water, making a wasteland of a former agricultural zone ---> the H bomb was tested here that would be used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima ---> Japanese-American residents of LA were interred in camps in the ghost towns LA created ---> Ansel Adams visited the internment camps and climbed the guard towers to take iconic pictures of the dunes ---> nuclear fallout from the tests blows as far east as New Jersey and the Kodak film factories, causing clouding on the film and affecting photographers. While there are several webs like this, the biggest connection is made between the nuclear tests and Hollywood movies – and while I did appreciate the image of those mannequin-filled test homes being razed by blastwaves (and especially because these facades recall Hollywood sets), this book is filled with constant references to old movies that felt overdone and boring (and, yes, I get that there's irony in all the big golden age stars apparently getting cancer from filming in the Nevada desert – John Wayne played a cowboy dying of cancer in The Shootist...while he was actually dying of cancer from playing cowboys! – but there were just too many movies referenced).

Even when talking about the diplomatic corps (another big facade, apparently, masking a toxic core), Perly compares the enthusiasm of the first embassies (Benjamin Franklin in Paris, eager to introduce a new nation) to the bloated bureaucracy of the modern (the new US embassy in Baghdad covers a square mile, with 15 000 staff, half of that security), and ties in the cinematic with further webs of connection:

Ben Franklin was not in Paris anymore, and neither was Marlon Brando in Indochine in The Ugly American. Ben Franklin was no longer living in the suburb of Passy, and neither was Marlon Brando, who rented a flat in Passy in The Last Tango in Paris.

In another example, Danny Coma was in Spain during Operation Broken Arrow – which saw a bunch of US nuclear warheads accidentally dropped off the coast of that country – and after having written about Picasso and Franco and Guernica, Basque bombings, and Spanish ties to 9/11, Perly points out that the area of Spain presumably most affected by the lost warheads was where Sergio Leone liked to film his spaghetti westerns; it's just all so laboured. Also laboured was the language in this book (more facades?):

Daniel Coma had twisted his love of language to make meeting about nuclear disarmament, and using the abstract words of meeting at the top levels, a safe thing to touch, to remove the harm from the living by speaking in dead words, to name things best named clearly, best because best for the soul of nations, and to do harm, by naming them in the worst possible way, however on the other hand, named in obfuscation and reification and nuclear capabilities, and here they were.

Huh? Vivienne is the main character of Death Valley, and she's always trying to capture truth, while being aware that her own point-of-view is present in every photograph. (This is also true for Johnny in his novels, and by extension, true for Perly herself.) Because Vivienne's career covers everything from Vietnam to the second Iraq War, she has much to say about America on the world stage. And everything she has to say is presented against this backdrop of “hallucinogenic realism” (so far in this review, I have straightened out many crooked lines to make these connections), and as we follow her down the rabbithole (literally: Alice and the White Rabbit appear alongside a hookah-smoking caterpillar), it's hard as a reader to understand why it must all be so opaque (and, yes, I get that Vivienne feels “concussed” from covering war zones; but was she really put in the path of a modern nuclear test by shadowy government officials, or is this whole road trip a fantasy?)

Along the way, there were some lovely bits of writing that I thought captures what Perly was trying to say:

Where there is no water, Earth's creatures will feel the former riverine life, how we miss our gills, our scales fluorescent magnificent. How things own us when we own things, how winter douses the light to let us rest in our emotions.

But more often, Perly came right out with unadorned opinion:

Unknowing pale orange mutant grasses grew into late afternoon. Masses of soft grey-blue blew up and down. Here was the forensic evidence of poison. America conquered itself, experimented on itself, ravaged its own land, bombed its own western desert back to the Stone Age. America weaponized its own air, which for years concussed its citizens. The land was too big, the space was too large, America's house was supersized, America busyworked into ruin, calling it love of country.

So there it is: I've told all about this book without really telling what it's about. There is much to admire in Death Valley, and while it feels like it ought to be read, I don't know to whom I would recommend it (which feels like the point of having it on a literary longlist).

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique novel. It's been quite a while since I've stumbled on a novel that challenges me both in terms of style and plot. Lots of moments in this book I don't completely understand yet. It introduced me to another view on military history I hadn't considered (nuclear war and war experiments), water and environmental history, and the history of Las Vegas and Death Valley. And I have a great list of classic movies I'm going to dig into. Truly original, multidisciplinary writing from Susan Perly.

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate saying this but I didn't enjoy this book. I didn't like any of the characters and felt nothing for them except disdain at times. I was often confused. On a positive note, I did learn a few things about Death Valley and the US' history of nuclear testing.

[Peter B · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a trip! Perly takes us into the heart of darkness that is Nuclear Weapons testing and the history of the desert surrounding Las Vegas. It is a nightmare path through freakish images and events that are both bizarre and yet frighteningly believeable.
She lures us in with an opening which immediately captures our interest in the plot to come. You will be rewarded if you stick with her when she leaves the main road and goes deep into Death Valley.

[J.H. Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this four stars primarily because the writing is fantastic but this is a berserk book. At times I was completely engrossed in the story and at other times I had no idea what was going on. I would have liked a bit more of cohesive plot but this bizarre, multi-genre romp through the Nevada desert is still a hell of a fun journey.

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird, trippy story. Reminds me a bit of Thomas Pynchon, in a good way! Exploring war and the nuclear age, relationships, feminism, spy state, and a lot more. So much going on, but it really was a fun read that required lots of thinking.

[Cathy Regular · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.0/5.0

I did not enjoy this book.

His eyes came into a smile now. It was not a fake smile; it was an authentic smile of authentic male condescension. Open, friendly, welcoming, tres American. Looking at her like she's the cute polite Canadian doll. "The stories I could tell you," he said.

and the man who keeps all his options open and believes there is always time can end up sitting on a plane alone, married to work.

[Bee Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exciting good read.

[Chris Wedman · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst book I've read this year. Convoluted, confusing, just complete mess overall. Avoid this one.

[Amanda]

a poetics of the nuclear age. imagination gone atomic. not an easy read but a rewarding one, crammed full of art, lust, war, effects of war, absurdity, whimsy. lots of roads and routes in and out of reality into wonderland. detours, heartbreaks, dead creatures, talking creatures. a 21st c. Jabberwocky. Bosch atomics. read the book with pen in hand. each sentence is a polished jewel. Vivienne Pink is antiheroine of her own black and white film noir. horror vacuii. spies. cacti.