Lithium for Medea

by Kate Braverman, Rick Moody (Foreword)

Lithium for Medea is a tale of addiction: to drugs, physical love, and dysfunctional family chains. It is also a tale of mothers and daughters, their mutual rebellion and unconscious mimicry. Rose grew up with an emotionally crippled, narcissistic mother while her father, a veteran gambler, spent his waking hours in the garden cut off from his wife's harangues. Now an adult, Rose works her way through a string of unhealthy love(less) affairs. After a brief, unhappy marriage, she slips more deeply and dangerously into the lair of a parasitic, cocaine-fed artist whose sensual and manipulative ways she grows addicted to in the bohemian squalor of Venice.

Genres: Fiction, Drugs, Mental Illness, Contemporary, Psychology, Novels, Realistic Fiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1981

About the author

Kate Braverman (born 1950) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet, originally from Los Angeles, California, who has garnered great acclaim for works including the novels Lithium for Medea (1979), Palm Latitudes (1988), Wonders of the West (1993), and The Incantation of Frida K (2001). Her most significant work has been in stylistic hybrid forms built upon poems and rendered as short stories. She has published two books of short stories, "Squandering the Blue" (1990) and "Small Craft Warnings" (1997). She has also published four books of poetry. She has won three Best American Short Stories awards, an O. Henry Award, Carver Short Story Award, as well as the Economist Prize and an Isherwood Fellowship. She was also the first recipient of Graywolf Press Creative Nonfiction Award for Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir, published February 2006.

Braverman has a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and an MA in English from Sonoma State University. She was a founding member of the Venice Poetry Workshop, Professor of Creative Writing at CSULA, staff faculty of the UCLA Writer's Program and taught privately a workshop which included Janet Fitch, Cristina Garcia and Donald Rawley. She lived in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Caterina Fake · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poetic, overwrought story of a pathetic 27-year-old woman whose (gambling-addicted) father is dying of cancer, whose mother is an overachieving neurotic with a secret past and who is herself involved in a masochistic dependent relationship with a junkie. She becomes a junkie herself in order to win his love. She listens to her father go on piteously about his dying, murders a cat as a means of self-empowerment? or to break up with the guy? or to propitiate the death god? or something?, recollects a pointless and masochistic marriage with a libidoless intellectual, and decides at the end that abandoning her recovering father and taking a trip is what she needs to get her life in order. HellO? Gumptionless, passive self-subordinating women without agency, clue or job in the thrall of domineering men makes for a profoundly discouraging read, no matter how poetic the text. Avoid.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an astonishing, poetic masterpiece. At times it can be somewhat difficult to digest, but the writing is well crafted and absolutely beautiful. This is not a charming story, but a very well-written novel about a woman who self-destructs through a series of bad relationships and drug use, yet performs a balancing act, trying to redeem herself by maintaining a tenuous bond with her narcissistic mother and cancer-ridden father. Braverman's presentation of this dichotomy between self-loathing and familial commitment is nothing less than spectacular.

[Crissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more of a 326 page poem than a book. It is beautiful and painful to read. The images are like bright Polaroids that are overexposed and require some squinting to put them into focus.

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb novel, set in the sweet rot of Los Angeles in the 1970s, chronicling addiction in all its physical and psychological forms. Willfully unlinear, and female in its perspective of the penetration of the needle, of the phallus, of the soul. The descriptions of shooting cocaine, and especially the cognitive state one enters before and after, are without parallel — better than Burroughs. It enacts their arc, their longing, and the time after the high on nearly every page. Even when the novel is silent on the subject, you can hear the buzzing ears and feel the aching jaw of a cocaine high.

Interesting to read next to Eve Babitz’s SLOW DAYS FAST COMPANY, which takes place in the same milieu and moment, but does so with gauzy lightness rather than Braverman’s shrieking intensity. This book is much more in the lineage of Joan Didion’s PLAY IT AS IT LAYS.

Chapter 16 is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever read.

[Amie · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is writing and then there is heart-crushing, soul exploding, boundless writing. Kate Braverman's ability to wander adeptly and yet freely through word forests while maintaining a sense of style and direction is astounding. The story is not told in a straight line but it's told beautifully. I had to read sentences and paragraphs over and over to absorb their full power. Highly worth the read, even when sometimes the main character seems thick headed, when all the characters seem thick headed, actually.

[Leota · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Braverman can write her ass off: stunning, sharply beautiful prose, fascinating characters. There is a hypnotic rhythm to this book - even when I wanted to look away, I couldn't.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Argh! I don’t know which storyline of this book was more depressing: Rose’s drug habit, her willing victimization by her narcissistic boyfriend, or her anguish at watching her father being slowly chipped away by cancer and surgeries. There were some interesting themes about family, heritage, memory, and damaged people, all told in Kate Braverman’s usual florid language. However, while I have enjoyed her nearly over-the-top poetic style in other books, this was her first novel and I think she had not yet learned to calibrate the excessive, almost baroque use of language that can be, when held just at the edge of almost-too-much, quite stunning. Here it sometimes seemed self-indulgent and so took me out of the story while I was wading through it.

I still liked the book moderately well and toward the end I enjoyed being able to root for Rose, as much of a mess as she was. But I would not recommend this one as a starting point for dipping into Braverman’s work. Begin instead with Palm Latitudes or her short stories in Squandering the Blue.

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lush with psycho poetry implanted in clear view prose. Thoughts on Los Angeles as hallucinations and as wide eyed revelations. A novel about a girl who is raised by a narcissistic TV show producer mom, and a professional horse track gambling father, who has survived cancer once but has it again. Braverman writes incredibly compelling sentences, paragraphs and ughhh all her commas and punctuation marks are compelling too. Part love story, part hate story. Part vision quest while scaling the Hollywood Hills, part drowning in a lagoon owned by a 4 foot tall artist freak named Jason. Glimpses into what it must be like to be off your rocker. Cats strangled. Cocaine injected. Faces cut apart. Lives saved or survived. A novel flooded with odd moonlight and blinding sunshine, flowers hosed down by a man in the yard avoiding confrontation. 300 + pages of flinches and grins.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically, it's about a woman with zero self-esteem who dates/marries/worships the shittiest men, and her mother is a narcissistic, vain martyr, and her father is dying (again) from cancer. Also, she's addicted to

There's some very nice dialogue and some poetic turns of phrase here-- and I really liked the letters between the main character and her younger cousin locked away in a mental institution-- but I'm giving it two stars because despite the quality writing, it feels like this book doesn't know what it wants to do or where it wants to go. And pleasant writing alone does not make a book if the book lacks a direction and cannot coherently articulate its raison d'etre.

[Mosker · Rating 4 out of 5]

O.k. MFA people needing a critical paper topic, here's one: Mentor & pupil. Kate Braverman and Janet Fitch. Books about crazy mother daughter relationships, with and without cocaine. Start tracking down those interviews, because with another decade added to their careers, this could make a kickass journal article or if Fitch gets a few more movie deals, even a small press run book. (Note to self, pitch AWP if nobody else does).

Oh yes? THe book. Read it. Sparser, more detail filled than Palm Lattitudes. Minor classic.

[m. soria · Rating 4 out of 5]

this can be really dark at times, but the language is beautiful and really worth reading.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Underground classic about addiction.

[Meg Tuite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kate Braverman is pure brilliance! I am reading through all of her books! Powerful, explosive, magnetic, like being in the middle of the best concert of your life on hallucinogenics! Her language is unparalleled and mesmerizing! Just get a copy of any book of Braverman's and let go of anything else you had to do. You won't be able to walk away once you begin!

[Monika · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Internet Archives e-book in English, her book isn't even translated to Swedish. I liked the title.
Didn't really like the book. Even hated her when she by no reason strangled a cat, Picasso. I think I will vomit. Very much a stream of consiousness. Very little about Lithium - no clue to the title.

[Bebop2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kate Braverman is a brilliant writer. An amazing first novel. I just re-read this book for the third time. It keeps getting better. She is one of the best writers today. How I wish she would come out with another novel!

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Move to LA read a novel about leaving LA. It's good. Gets better as you move along till it is really really good by the end. Love her poetic inverted style. Should be on a shelf of books about death - or near-dying.

[Anne Martens · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lost and found, or possibly just lost, story of what runs through our heads when we have been betrayed. Poetic language and psychological realism.

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harrowing prose, poetic and forcibly depressing. No relief from the relentless and dazzling onset of darkness and decay. And all this from a master tactician/ writer/ artist.

[Zhara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece!Couldn't put it down.Time well spent. Hope to read more from this author.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm also reading Squandering the Blue by Kate and while I feel she recycles events from her own life (crazy mother, everyone on drugs/booze/nicotine) endlessly, few people can write more poetically. She felt for a long while that Lithium for Medea was possibly her masterpiece, but I think that title goes to Palm Latitudes. Nevertheless, her work always inspires me.

[Heaven · Rating 2 out of 5]

An examination of intergenerational trauma, brimming with beautiful prose; however, at some certain point due to the excess of the flowery language your eyes eventually glaze over. It's very slow paced, and the main character Rose is very pathetic NGL and the ending makes no sense, but I can't deny that some parts almost brought me to tears.

I feel if I re-read this book in the future I'll appreciate it more.

[Karalena Fjortoft · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m going to be honest and say that i skimmed the last quarter of the book after she murdered a sweet cat. It was just so infuriating to witness her subservience to asshole men the entire book and then she kills a cat!?. The writing was adequate with nice atmospheric descriptions of LA, but far too many pretty metaphors convoluted the book.

[Abby Dommer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh god, I wish I never knew this book existed. I’ll never recover. Clearly Kate Braverman is a brilliant writer with her gorgeous use of language but the scene with the cat… I can’t handle it. Why did she have to write that. It all makes me physically ill. I hate it.

[Tammy V · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a tour de force of descriptions, mostly depressing. I never knew there were so many ways to write "white" and make it sound ugly. Also dreamy.

I am told the book is about addiction but the protagonist certainly had a good setup for an addict: a place of her own, a boyfriend who was a jerk but who (somehow) managed to hold on to rental units over the 7 year course of her addiction, supply both of them with cocaine to shoot, and not seemingly advance in their addiction (as in, "sell the damn houses we need more"). Being intimately familiar with addicts over the course of my life, I find this a bit hard to believe but anything is possible.

I think you could take out a hunk of the middle of this novel, keep the beginning and end, and have a good story.

None of the characters are likeable to me and yet I read the whole novel, happily, to underline phrases and words and thoughts that will provide much inspiration to me in my own writing. Braverman is good for that.

Having read this and several stories in "Good Day for Supuku" I can say Braverman has a mommy and a daddy problem (they seem to be separate, but I'm not sure you can separate that). As I've just bought 2 other of her novels, I'm hoping that doesn't hold through all her work, although she has a vivid imagination and none of the mommies are horrible in the same way, but the daddies are in their leaving.

She uses a lot of alliteration and repetition, and borrows heavily from lyric nonfiction (I think this is supposed to be fiction but may be sort of autobiographical, I don't know her background) strategies in her writing.

excerpts:
"...the sun is fatigued and indifferent....The sun suddenly regathers itself for the final battle. It forms one perfect red ball and hangs smack above the ocean, a gouged eye, a beach ball dropped down into the slow stirring night waves of hungry fish mouths and darting crepe-thin fins."

"Her eyes ere agate, flecked and somehow windy."

"I thought about that reading the "Wall Street Journal" yesterday. News is merely the way men gossip."

"IT was becoming clear to me that Francine was missing important cards from her personal deck."

"Suddenly wild moths were beating my eyes wide. I was the candle and the arc of light...The room was inordinately yellow. I smelled alcohol. The room was filled with ripening lemons. Even the light bulb was a glistening yellow metal, as a captured moon might be.,,I was arctic white. The sea opened her icy lip. My path edged avalanches and albino seals I was white under a white skull of sky in my own white season...The afternoon was leaking out white blood into white air. And I was white beyond reason. The poisonous shoreline disappeared singed pure as old shells, their white wormy grooves scorched crepelike, thin as wings. Fat white gulls shrieked in a thick white lull...And I am white marble. No. I am white gravestones. No I am wearing white bandages around my face. I am tongueless. My mouth is sewed shut....Yes. I was freshly painted white fence spokes and ivory piano keys. "


I just discovered her. I'm enthralled with her overwrought descriptives, digressions, detachment from the earth and reality and intrigued by how ugly she make the world seem. This is new. I hope it stays fresh.

[Richard Risemberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading this engaging but tormented novel on this inauguration morning...here's my quickie review:

An odd, passionate, and almost-perfect novel, written in a gush of negative ecstasy that echoes Allen Ginsberg's best work in prose form, probably by intent. Author Kate Braverman is herself a poet, I'd guess more poet than novelist, and the book would be perhaps perfect if she had held back just a little bit more. The imagery sometimes--regularly--tries too hard and is superficially impressive but, you occasionally realize, not meaningful. This is a small cavil.

The protagonist is pathetic despite her skill at logging sensation; her choices in men seem to be driven by an urge to punish herself, or perhaps by a dedication to the extravagant premises with which they front themselves. One, whom she marries and then sensibly leaves, is brilliantly devoted to self-delusion and eventually goes nuts; one guides her into a cocaine addiction and is constantly gaslighting her. There is a number of one-night stands that are brushed off in half-phrases. The real story is in her relationship with her intense and untrustworthy mother and her stolid but feckless father; the parents are divorced but still dedicated to each other in a deeply odd way, and the core of the story involves the mother's dragging the protagonist through the father's battle against throat cancer. Spoiler alert: he makes it, and the protagonist does not exactly transcend her self-doubts, but packs them away and drives east to nowhere. The mother, Francine, is the true central character in my analysis.

The novel espouses the usual white intellectual's views of Los Angeles as a sunblasted sump of stale hopes, but the descriptions are superb when they're not overdone.

I'm glad I read it now; had I read it when I was young it would have ruined my own writing style for years. Think of it as an extended prose poem, emotionally violent though never with a threat of poverty to distract the protagonist from her incessant self-regard. This sounds like a condemnation but it's not: this is almost a great novel. Pretty damn close in fact. Read it and you'll see.

[Susan Anderson Misey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A poetic tour de force with a meandering plot and a main character who is so self-absorbed and self-destructive, it was hard to pull for her at times. Had I not lived in L.A. during the cocaine years and worked for Braverman's mother, I don't think I would have stuck with it. Now, from the distance of more than thirty years and three-thousand miles, I did get some insight on the woman who shaped the author via this text since all fiction has some autobiographical elements. That, I suppose, was worth the time and money. There may be Lithium for Medea, but the reader will need an antidepressant or a stiff drink after this one.

[Hank]

A harrowing account of emotional and chemical dependency. While the dirty realists were busy aping Carver's concise realism, Braverman wrote in swooshing metaphors. In Lithium for Medea, she lets her narrator sink into ever-deeper pits of squalor on the beaches of Venice. Rose mainlines coke and fellatios her predatory boyfriend hours before visiting her father in the hospital. Good for her.

Great LARB article on Braverman. I suspect her status as a west coaster who hated Hollywood has doomed her to being permanently under-read. Hopefully that changes: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/f...

[Michele Rios Petrelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is dripping with soul, heart and blood. The depth and motion of characters are rich in complexity. I can only dream to write with such substance. Poetic, raw, meaningful within the bowels of human traumas.

"It can grind its clipped metal wings forever while I ride in my window seat, crisscrossing the childhood I carry with me like stage props in a trunk."

"Inside I'm unchanged. Your father loved me once. You loved me once. But despite it all, the core of who and what I am remains unchanged."

Rite of passage through a smudged lens is worth the read for sure!

[Tea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poet's sometimes write inspiring novels (see Ben Lerner), however this was so much fluff and drama and pretty words when it needed more concise storytelling. I couldn't really stand any of the characters, especially the main protagonist. She is pathetic and groveling to a series of even worse men, and she murders a cat for some reason. I am guessing as a nod to the barbaric and superstitious old world, in other words, a ritual. I finished it and enjoyed some of the prose, but ugh, regret this one.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

José Luis Valenzuela said to fictionalize your own story is therapy and of no interest to anyone else. Kate Braverman is an exception. You have to give yourself over to her poetics, but it's worth it, especially if you are a fan of Los Angeles. She really makes the city comes alive in the whole seventies smoggy turn for the worse. Although I don't think she would like to be lumped in with Eve Babitz, both B's have got the seventies and eighties LA down to a T.