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I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse--one woman's furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood.
Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling case of postpartum depression. Her temporary escape from domestic duties and an opportunity to reconnect with old friends mutates into an extended romp away from the confines of marriage and motherhood, and a seemingly bottomless descent into the past. Deep in the Mojave Desert where she grew up, she meets her ghosts at every turn: the first love whose self-destruction still haunts her; her father, a member of the most famous cult in American history; her mother, whose native spark gutters with every passing year. She can't go back in time to make any of it right, but what exactly is her way forward? Alone in the wilderness, at last she begins to make herself at home in the world.
Bold, tender, and often hilarious, I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness reaffirms Watkins as one of the signal writers of our time.
Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling case of postpartum depression. Her temporary escape from domestic duties and an opportunity to reconnect with old friends mutates into an extended romp away from the confines of marriage and motherhood, and a seemingly bottomless descent into the past. Deep in the Mojave Desert where she grew up, she meets her ghosts at every turn: the first love whose self-destruction still haunts her; her father, a member of the most famous cult in American history; her mother, whose native spark gutters with every passing year. She can't go back in time to make any of it right, but what exactly is her way forward? Alone in the wilderness, at last she begins to make herself at home in the world.
Bold, tender, and often hilarious, I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness reaffirms Watkins as one of the signal writers of our time.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published October 5, 2021
886 people are currently reading
27923 people want to read
About the author
Claire Vaye Watkins
17 books654 followersClaire Vaye Watkins was born in Bishop, California in 1984. She was raised in the Mojave Desert, first in Tecopa, California and then across the state line in Pahrump, Nevada. A graduate of the University of Nevada Reno, Claire earned her MFA from the Ohio State University, where she was a Presidential Fellow. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, New Stories from the Southwest 2013, the New York Times and elsewhere. Claire has received fellowships from the Writers’ Conferences at Sewanee and Bread Loaf.
Her collection of short stories, Battleborn (Riverhead Books), won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, Battleborn was named a best book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Flavorwire, and NPR.org. In 2012, Claire was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.”
Currently a visiting assistant professor at Princeton University, Claire is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.
Her collection of short stories, Battleborn (Riverhead Books), won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, Battleborn was named a best book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Flavorwire, and NPR.org. In 2012, Claire was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.”
Currently a visiting assistant professor at Princeton University, Claire is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,349 reviews
October 21, 2021
2.5 stars: “I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness”. Just from the title alone, I was intrigued. It’s billed as a woman trying to cope with being a new mother and a wife. Plus it’s one of the most anticipated novels of the Fall of 2021.
Author Claire Vaye Watkins chooses to name her protagonist, well, Claire Watkins. Hmmm…does a work of fiction by an author ever name their main character after themselves??? Is this a memoir??? Watkins uses her life as fodder, and most likely has fun with her reading audience, having us all ponder what is real and what is not. Even the first sentence “I’ve tried to tell this story a bunch of times.” leads the reader to consider. Plus, novel Claire is an author too.
In the story, she abandons her infant and husband for a book tour. From the start, we understand that Claire is struggling with motherhood. She takes the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression test, which is hilarious. She ponders, when does postnatal depression become just depression?? The beginning of the story was the funniest to me. Most mothers can empathize with the endeavors of being a new mom with a crying baby.
Furthermore, she has an ongoing debate about “The Oregon Trail Generation” which is sandwiched between Gen X and the Millennials. It’s the generation that came of age on the internet. Those who played “The Oregon Trail” and those who parented children who played “The Oregon Trail” understand. It’s an interesting discussion.
Lines are crossed between fiction and memoir when novel Claire has the same father as author Claire. And that father was part of the Charles Manson cult. The father wasn’t involved in the notable killings, but he was involved in supplying women/girls to Manson. Let’s say Claire’s young life in a cult most likely influenced her life as a new mother.
Where lines are not crossed is book Claire’s obsession with her vagina, specifically teeth that are growing in her vagina. I needed to google this, as it is a thing in mythical format. Yes, cysts can contain teeth (mostly those near the ovaries). Can a woman have a vagina full of teeth? The answer is no, but book Claire’s does. Bizarre, yet I went on.
The title of the story came from a boyfriend who had that statement tattooed on his body. The boyfriend had a religious mother who wanted him to be good. Well, he got a tattoo with that statement explaining his feelings. Claire spends time searching for this ex-boyfriend and we get a bit of the backstory. Claire decides that she’s not choosing darkness, but darkness is choosing her. Don’t we all feel that at times??
This is a strange story, and I don’t think I was the intended target audience. I give a full 5 stars to the title. 5 stars for quirkiness. 1 star for format as it was too strange to follow at times (perhaps it’s because I used the audio format). 1 star for falling short of what this story could have been.
Author Claire Vaye Watkins chooses to name her protagonist, well, Claire Watkins. Hmmm…does a work of fiction by an author ever name their main character after themselves??? Is this a memoir??? Watkins uses her life as fodder, and most likely has fun with her reading audience, having us all ponder what is real and what is not. Even the first sentence “I’ve tried to tell this story a bunch of times.” leads the reader to consider. Plus, novel Claire is an author too.
In the story, she abandons her infant and husband for a book tour. From the start, we understand that Claire is struggling with motherhood. She takes the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression test, which is hilarious. She ponders, when does postnatal depression become just depression?? The beginning of the story was the funniest to me. Most mothers can empathize with the endeavors of being a new mom with a crying baby.
Furthermore, she has an ongoing debate about “The Oregon Trail Generation” which is sandwiched between Gen X and the Millennials. It’s the generation that came of age on the internet. Those who played “The Oregon Trail” and those who parented children who played “The Oregon Trail” understand. It’s an interesting discussion.
Lines are crossed between fiction and memoir when novel Claire has the same father as author Claire. And that father was part of the Charles Manson cult. The father wasn’t involved in the notable killings, but he was involved in supplying women/girls to Manson. Let’s say Claire’s young life in a cult most likely influenced her life as a new mother.
Where lines are not crossed is book Claire’s obsession with her vagina, specifically teeth that are growing in her vagina. I needed to google this, as it is a thing in mythical format. Yes, cysts can contain teeth (mostly those near the ovaries). Can a woman have a vagina full of teeth? The answer is no, but book Claire’s does. Bizarre, yet I went on.
The title of the story came from a boyfriend who had that statement tattooed on his body. The boyfriend had a religious mother who wanted him to be good. Well, he got a tattoo with that statement explaining his feelings. Claire spends time searching for this ex-boyfriend and we get a bit of the backstory. Claire decides that she’s not choosing darkness, but darkness is choosing her. Don’t we all feel that at times??
This is a strange story, and I don’t think I was the intended target audience. I give a full 5 stars to the title. 5 stars for quirkiness. 1 star for format as it was too strange to follow at times (perhaps it’s because I used the audio format). 1 star for falling short of what this story could have been.
March 20, 2022
Emotionally wrenching. Limitless narrative pleasure.
Claire Vaye Watkins is a delightful writer. She has remarkable control of tone and detail. The novel starts with the narrator’s plunge into the depths of postpartum depression. Watkins herself was born to an abysmal personal subject matter. So you think you had crazy parents? In real life her father, Paul Watkins, was a procurer of young girls for Charles Manson. After the Tate-La Bianca murders Paul went to the police and bore witness against Manson. She writes about that here, the father she loved, as she did in her story collection Battleborn.
Now as far as I know the mother may be wholly fictional, but she’s a beaut! All is well until she falls off the wagon. She’s an OxyContin addict and another victim of the cursed Sackler Family. She’s a thief, a forger of documents—you get the idea. The story is reminiscent here in some respects of Geoffrey Wolff‘s Duke of Deception; and also in the spirit of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, though infinitely darker.
Claire, the narrator, and her sister, Lise, both born in Death Valley, California, are taken by their mother on night time raids of nearby housing developments, where they pick up plantings for home landscaping purposes. They go into newly built homes not yet sold and talk over their design ideas: colors of rooms, wallpapers, backsplashes, gardens, fixtures, then they get in the car and go home. Very poor, they live paycheck to paycheck; the mother is very industrious until, as I’ve said, she relapses after many years of AA meetings.
The book would not be readable without its comic relief, which is remarkably deft. Now for a few mild criticisms: The comedic sensibility is very West Coast, almost to a blinkered extent. Moreover, the text is too crammed with topical allusions, which probably means the novel will date quickly. Though A Heartbreaking Work has these attributes and it’s succeeded quite well, so what do I know?
As a rule I don’t like sex in literature because it’s text. However, it’s necessary here because it signals a loss of self-control in Claire. There’s no way this book could do without its sexual romps; it would be like The Farewell Symphony without the sex.
When Claire leaves her newborn daughter and husband, I was reminded of the insanity visited on the protagonist of Elena Ferrantes’ The Days of Abandonment. That scene where she goes downstairs in the apartment building, with the unsupervised children upstairs, and tries to fuck the impotent musician. It’s the same impulse here but the reigning madness is polyamory.
“Couldn’t we be decent and loyal and at the same time completely free? Maybe things like ‘loyal’ and ‘free’ look different to different people, and did that make someone with a different ‘loyalty’ or ‘freedom’ wrong or bad? . . . Isn’t the best kind of life one where all kinds of things happen? Theo [the husband] did not see it this way. I could not apologize and come home because I was not sorry. I did not feel love was ever a bad thing. Days Theo was at the hospital and the baby was at Miss Moonbeam’s I let myself into the house to shower and smell her things.” (p. 93)
But neither is this true polyamory since she does not clear her lovers with her husband. The reader yearns for her to return to her child. But she goes to Reno, leaves behind the child, hooks up with a mountaineer she picks up at a reading — and suddenly you realize that she’s modeling herself after her parents. Those terribly kind but terribly flawed people; she can only replicate their mistakes. It’s like the kid in Moonlight who emulates his non-biological dad (Mahershala Ali) and because that’s his only model he becomes a drug dealer just like his dad, who’s no longer on the scene.
What a wrenching tale! Claire’s lostness, grief, self sabotage, self degradation; her utter inability to know better. Is this self-hatred? Is it illness? The mountaineer lover knows something’s wrong when he breaks it off with her. She’s not right. Toward the end she’s living in a tent on the side of the road in Death Valley, carrying a stick as protection against coyotes, whose howls can be heard in the night.
Read it, but be prepared to bleed.
Claire Vaye Watkins is a delightful writer. She has remarkable control of tone and detail. The novel starts with the narrator’s plunge into the depths of postpartum depression. Watkins herself was born to an abysmal personal subject matter. So you think you had crazy parents? In real life her father, Paul Watkins, was a procurer of young girls for Charles Manson. After the Tate-La Bianca murders Paul went to the police and bore witness against Manson. She writes about that here, the father she loved, as she did in her story collection Battleborn.
Now as far as I know the mother may be wholly fictional, but she’s a beaut! All is well until she falls off the wagon. She’s an OxyContin addict and another victim of the cursed Sackler Family. She’s a thief, a forger of documents—you get the idea. The story is reminiscent here in some respects of Geoffrey Wolff‘s Duke of Deception; and also in the spirit of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, though infinitely darker.
Claire, the narrator, and her sister, Lise, both born in Death Valley, California, are taken by their mother on night time raids of nearby housing developments, where they pick up plantings for home landscaping purposes. They go into newly built homes not yet sold and talk over their design ideas: colors of rooms, wallpapers, backsplashes, gardens, fixtures, then they get in the car and go home. Very poor, they live paycheck to paycheck; the mother is very industrious until, as I’ve said, she relapses after many years of AA meetings.
The book would not be readable without its comic relief, which is remarkably deft. Now for a few mild criticisms: The comedic sensibility is very West Coast, almost to a blinkered extent. Moreover, the text is too crammed with topical allusions, which probably means the novel will date quickly. Though A Heartbreaking Work has these attributes and it’s succeeded quite well, so what do I know?
As a rule I don’t like sex in literature because it’s text. However, it’s necessary here because it signals a loss of self-control in Claire. There’s no way this book could do without its sexual romps; it would be like The Farewell Symphony without the sex.
When Claire leaves her newborn daughter and husband, I was reminded of the insanity visited on the protagonist of Elena Ferrantes’ The Days of Abandonment. That scene where she goes downstairs in the apartment building, with the unsupervised children upstairs, and tries to fuck the impotent musician. It’s the same impulse here but the reigning madness is polyamory.
“Couldn’t we be decent and loyal and at the same time completely free? Maybe things like ‘loyal’ and ‘free’ look different to different people, and did that make someone with a different ‘loyalty’ or ‘freedom’ wrong or bad? . . . Isn’t the best kind of life one where all kinds of things happen? Theo [the husband] did not see it this way. I could not apologize and come home because I was not sorry. I did not feel love was ever a bad thing. Days Theo was at the hospital and the baby was at Miss Moonbeam’s I let myself into the house to shower and smell her things.” (p. 93)
But neither is this true polyamory since she does not clear her lovers with her husband. The reader yearns for her to return to her child. But she goes to Reno, leaves behind the child, hooks up with a mountaineer she picks up at a reading — and suddenly you realize that she’s modeling herself after her parents. Those terribly kind but terribly flawed people; she can only replicate their mistakes. It’s like the kid in Moonlight who emulates his non-biological dad (Mahershala Ali) and because that’s his only model he becomes a drug dealer just like his dad, who’s no longer on the scene.
What a wrenching tale! Claire’s lostness, grief, self sabotage, self degradation; her utter inability to know better. Is this self-hatred? Is it illness? The mountaineer lover knows something’s wrong when he breaks it off with her. She’s not right. Toward the end she’s living in a tent on the side of the road in Death Valley, carrying a stick as protection against coyotes, whose howls can be heard in the night.
Read it, but be prepared to bleed.
October 26, 2021
Claire Vaye Watkins has written a novel about the most frightening creature in America: a bad mother. “I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness” is an audaciously candid story about the crush of conflicted feelings that a baby inspires — particularly for a woman who regards the nursery as a place where ambition, freedom and sex die.
This late in the history of feminism that theme may sound too familiar, but Watkins’s book sparks the same electric jolt that “The Awakening” must have sent juicing through Kate Chopin’s readers in 1899. Here is a novel to hate and to love, to make you feel simultaneously disgusted and unloosed.
The plot of “I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness” is surreal but perhaps no more surreal than pregnancy itself. In that sense, Watkins has merely given full voice to the sudden disorientation of motherhood, which is so often muffled beneath a crocheted bunny blanket of sentimentality. “She was a. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
This late in the history of feminism that theme may sound too familiar, but Watkins’s book sparks the same electric jolt that “The Awakening” must have sent juicing through Kate Chopin’s readers in 1899. Here is a novel to hate and to love, to make you feel simultaneously disgusted and unloosed.
The plot of “I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness” is surreal but perhaps no more surreal than pregnancy itself. In that sense, Watkins has merely given full voice to the sudden disorientation of motherhood, which is so often muffled beneath a crocheted bunny blanket of sentimentality. “She was a. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
dnf
October 26, 2021DNF at 82 pages. I can't. I hate this so much.
October 17, 2021
I really really did not like this book. I was traveling and it’s the only book I had, so I continued on with it. The main character was very unlikeable and I had to guess what was going on for the majority of the book. Seemed just like a random stream of consciousness. Eek. Why are people saying this book is good??? 🥲
June 16, 2021
I just want to say that I feel incredibly weird being the first review here, but I just read this in two feverish sittings so I feel I should channel that energy and review this so I can convince you to read this brilliant novel. What I truly want to do is write a hundred page close reading analysis, but I don’t think you want that and I have a full time job. So I’ll make my gushing, five-star review as brief as possible!
In short: I can’t stop thinking about this book. It was extraordinary. I feel like I just had a really intense, meandering conversation with an old friend who needed to unload their uneasy mind about their family, their friends, their lovers, and their career while also reckoning with their childhood in the American desert.
The narrator is difficult, sometimes mean, melancholy, and magnetic. She is also wry, ironic, and desperate. She has had a traumatic past and is confronting an uncertain future while being a new mother, and all of that pain, grief, and regret was so visceral. She desires the fullness of life and love, but cruelty of death and grief warps this for her. This dissonance leads her to not always make the right decision, but you come to know why and learn to understand her. I was so enthralled with her and her journey.
About a third of the way through I had a revelation that I do not want to spoil for people who don’t know who Watkins is (I didn’t before this book! But I’m so glad I do now!) because I think readers need to realize it for themselves. (Slight Spoilers for those who wish to know what I’m talking about….this is autofiction! Some quick googling confirmed some details and to say my mind was blown was an understatement.)
The prose is intense and dark and funny, and it moved me to tears. The tangents, the poetry, the sharpness all made this wild, beautiful novel profound. There is a palpable pain within these lines that is unlike anything that I have read because of how long it lingers. Watkins spent years on this book, and you can tell because it is so well crafted. Some of those lines are just utter perfection!
Since finishing this book I have read some essays by Watkins and highly recommend reading “On Pandering” which is on Tin House’s website. I can’t wait to read her other books!
Oh and I received this ARC in an exchange for an honest review!
In short: I can’t stop thinking about this book. It was extraordinary. I feel like I just had a really intense, meandering conversation with an old friend who needed to unload their uneasy mind about their family, their friends, their lovers, and their career while also reckoning with their childhood in the American desert.
The narrator is difficult, sometimes mean, melancholy, and magnetic. She is also wry, ironic, and desperate. She has had a traumatic past and is confronting an uncertain future while being a new mother, and all of that pain, grief, and regret was so visceral. She desires the fullness of life and love, but cruelty of death and grief warps this for her. This dissonance leads her to not always make the right decision, but you come to know why and learn to understand her. I was so enthralled with her and her journey.
About a third of the way through I had a revelation that I do not want to spoil for people who don’t know who Watkins is (I didn’t before this book! But I’m so glad I do now!) because I think readers need to realize it for themselves. (Slight Spoilers for those who wish to know what I’m talking about….this is autofiction! Some quick googling confirmed some details and to say my mind was blown was an understatement.)
The prose is intense and dark and funny, and it moved me to tears. The tangents, the poetry, the sharpness all made this wild, beautiful novel profound. There is a palpable pain within these lines that is unlike anything that I have read because of how long it lingers. Watkins spent years on this book, and you can tell because it is so well crafted. Some of those lines are just utter perfection!
Since finishing this book I have read some essays by Watkins and highly recommend reading “On Pandering” which is on Tin House’s website. I can’t wait to read her other books!
Oh and I received this ARC in an exchange for an honest review!
November 16, 2021
I've just reread my 2015 review of Claire Vaye Watkins's collection of short stories, Battleborn, so forgive me for quoting myself here, but my thoughts after reading I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness are exactly the same:
"Stories I admired, but with which I felt very little emotional connection. Exceptional technique, but curiously absent of heart. The characters were distant, disheartened, sad creatures, dried up, like hollows in the desert where water once stood."
This work of autobiographical fiction opens with an aching consideration of postpartum depression and I'd hoped for a reflective exploration into the resistance of love and betrayal of body and soul demanded by the arrival of a child. The ambivalence of motherhood, both the main character's distorted-by-exhaustion love for her daughter and her mother's disregard for the author and her two sisters, remains a theme throughout this bitter and brittle fiction-not fiction. But after a detour into her father's embrace of and spinning away from the cult of Charles Manson, the abandonment by the narrator of her daughter is only slyly touched on, a distraction from her own seeking of pleasure and a return to the way things were — when she could write and have affairs with abandon, without guilt or a sense of responsibility to anyone (why oh why did you have a child? Get a fucking goldfish).
The defiance in the looping, aimless narrative is dulled by the inexplicable inclusion of her mother's letters to her cousin, which feel like filler and are easily skipped. It is further lost in a series of pointless conversations with her friends and former roommates — Millennial ramblings full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.
Claire Faye Watkins is a crazy-good writer. I was mesmerized by Gold Fame Citrus and I'll sign up to read anything she writes. This novel/memoir offers brilliant touches of Joan Didion and Rachel Cusk in its clear-eyed questioning of motherhood, feminism, and what it means to be a writer, and its depiction of landscapes that scald and shape us. I just didn't care what happened to the narrator or really even want to be in the same room with her.
"Stories I admired, but with which I felt very little emotional connection. Exceptional technique, but curiously absent of heart. The characters were distant, disheartened, sad creatures, dried up, like hollows in the desert where water once stood."
This work of autobiographical fiction opens with an aching consideration of postpartum depression and I'd hoped for a reflective exploration into the resistance of love and betrayal of body and soul demanded by the arrival of a child. The ambivalence of motherhood, both the main character's distorted-by-exhaustion love for her daughter and her mother's disregard for the author and her two sisters, remains a theme throughout this bitter and brittle fiction-not fiction. But after a detour into her father's embrace of and spinning away from the cult of Charles Manson, the abandonment by the narrator of her daughter is only slyly touched on, a distraction from her own seeking of pleasure and a return to the way things were — when she could write and have affairs with abandon, without guilt or a sense of responsibility to anyone (why oh why did you have a child? Get a fucking goldfish).
The defiance in the looping, aimless narrative is dulled by the inexplicable inclusion of her mother's letters to her cousin, which feel like filler and are easily skipped. It is further lost in a series of pointless conversations with her friends and former roommates — Millennial ramblings full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.
Claire Faye Watkins is a crazy-good writer. I was mesmerized by Gold Fame Citrus and I'll sign up to read anything she writes. This novel/memoir offers brilliant touches of Joan Didion and Rachel Cusk in its clear-eyed questioning of motherhood, feminism, and what it means to be a writer, and its depiction of landscapes that scald and shape us. I just didn't care what happened to the narrator or really even want to be in the same room with her.
November 1, 2021
I couldn't wait to get my hands on this release because the title, cover, and summary held so much promise. As someone who suffered postpartum depression, I was ready for this book!
Instead, I got a few pages about PPD followed by long rambling chapters about the author's father's ties to Charles Manson and random letters her mother wrote as a teen that had nothing to do with anything. Also, there was something about Watkins growing teeth in her vagina after birth.
I'm down with autobiographical fiction in theory but this felt more like that kind of literary fiction where it's supposed to be weird and edgy and you feel apologetic for not "getting it" but as a life-long reader I'm going to be honest and just say I found it boring and confusing.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
Instead, I got a few pages about PPD followed by long rambling chapters about the author's father's ties to Charles Manson and random letters her mother wrote as a teen that had nothing to do with anything. Also, there was something about Watkins growing teeth in her vagina after birth.
I'm down with autobiographical fiction in theory but this felt more like that kind of literary fiction where it's supposed to be weird and edgy and you feel apologetic for not "getting it" but as a life-long reader I'm going to be honest and just say I found it boring and confusing.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
April 10, 2022
Audiobook…. read by Kirsten Sieh
…..8 hours and 28 minutes
The familiar counterculture themes of idealistic and anti-materialistic….. dropping out…. changing the world madness…
was an engaging trippy-hippy-enjoyable audiobook listen.
I think I understand what ‘autofiction’ is a little more clearly…..
It’s everything this book is….
hard to pinpoint…. odd … strange …. depressing … AND….funny.
It’s an experience to simply digest….dance with the prose … reflect… take in rage, sadness, and the sparkly desert sunshine.
I liked it! 3.5 rating
…..8 hours and 28 minutes
The familiar counterculture themes of idealistic and anti-materialistic….. dropping out…. changing the world madness…
was an engaging trippy-hippy-enjoyable audiobook listen.
I think I understand what ‘autofiction’ is a little more clearly…..
It’s everything this book is….
hard to pinpoint…. odd … strange …. depressing … AND….funny.
It’s an experience to simply digest….dance with the prose … reflect… take in rage, sadness, and the sparkly desert sunshine.
I liked it! 3.5 rating
October 27, 2021
I am going to save you $20 and five hours: do not read this book. It is terrible.
I was lured by the title and cover art, like many of the other reviewers here, only to find an incoherent, lugubrious, thinly-veiled memoir filled with Millennial witticisms ("look at me, I am so smart and observant!") outlining a sad vapid life of a cultural elite who lives in sheer chaos (open marriage, status-addicted feminist). Barf.
This book is pure garbage and made me genuinely worried for my generation. Do not recommend.
I was lured by the title and cover art, like many of the other reviewers here, only to find an incoherent, lugubrious, thinly-veiled memoir filled with Millennial witticisms ("look at me, I am so smart and observant!") outlining a sad vapid life of a cultural elite who lives in sheer chaos (open marriage, status-addicted feminist). Barf.
This book is pure garbage and made me genuinely worried for my generation. Do not recommend.
December 2, 2021
3.5 white trash daughter of an addict & Charles Manson cult guy turned self aware white polemic academic “finding herself” between enlightenment and shittiness, being a deadbeat mom, trauma, suffering, failing…
October 21, 2021
This is so filled with self-loathing that I expected to end up feeling more sympathy for Claire (her name in the book is her own name) than I did. Objectively she is a sympathetic character. Claire was raised by mentally ill unprincipled addicted parents whom she loved, and both of whom died both too early and well after they ought to have done. In the wake of chaos she created a self utterly unconnected to everything in her past. Then she broke, and she broke the people she should have loved and protected. Then she returned to her self -- ashes to ashes, dust to dust, middle of nowhere crazy hippie life to middle of nowhere crazy hippie life, and at some point from brokenness to some form of wholeness. She knits together a dismal disturbing past and a conventional present, the particulars of which are defined by others. This book definitely subscribes to the theory that depression springs not from chemistry but from living a life at odds with what drives us. And so she found her center, but at what cost? Though many a man has left his family to find himself, to find a greater truth, starting with Odysseus, I expect more from women. There, I said it. That might be anti-feminist, but I don't think so. I don't want feminism that encourages woman to sink down into the narcissistic suck of white American manhood. That does not move us foreword.
I always have difficulty with autofiction, not knowing what is real and what is fantasy. But here it worked. For me autofiction done best uses fiction to get to truths a straight recitation of fact would not reveal, and I think Watkins did that. She is a wonderful writer, and she tells a story (her story?) that touches on larger truths. I think Watkins achieves that "larger truths" goal here in part simply by using autofiction. I know that sounds confusing, but the way I see it the major point of this tale is that you need not make choices. You live in tune with your inner voice and exclude nothing. You can be a partner and a slut (I use that term in a non-pejorative sense), a mother and a self-involved loner, an artist and an academic, a narcististic shitheel and a generous friend. So if the larger truth is that one need not make choices, that one action does not in anyway predestine the next, the use of autofiction - not choosing between fiction and non - highlights that. It truly serves the point of the book.
I enjoyed the read, The writing itself is beautiful, the story compelling (if also off-putting) and often quite amusing, and there is a real sense the author accomplished exactly what she set out to do. That is a lot. But boy do I feel sorry for her ex-husband and daughter (FWIW I think she does too.) If you need a main character you are going to end up liking I suspect you should steer clear. This one will never understand that her version of love only feels good to her and completely disregards the needs of the poor people she purports to love, and therefore isn't love at all.
I always have difficulty with autofiction, not knowing what is real and what is fantasy. But here it worked. For me autofiction done best uses fiction to get to truths a straight recitation of fact would not reveal, and I think Watkins did that. She is a wonderful writer, and she tells a story (her story?) that touches on larger truths. I think Watkins achieves that "larger truths" goal here in part simply by using autofiction. I know that sounds confusing, but the way I see it the major point of this tale is that you need not make choices. You live in tune with your inner voice and exclude nothing. You can be a partner and a slut (I use that term in a non-pejorative sense), a mother and a self-involved loner, an artist and an academic, a narcististic shitheel and a generous friend. So if the larger truth is that one need not make choices, that one action does not in anyway predestine the next, the use of autofiction - not choosing between fiction and non - highlights that. It truly serves the point of the book.
I enjoyed the read, The writing itself is beautiful, the story compelling (if also off-putting) and often quite amusing, and there is a real sense the author accomplished exactly what she set out to do. That is a lot. But boy do I feel sorry for her ex-husband and daughter (FWIW I think she does too.) If you need a main character you are going to end up liking I suspect you should steer clear. This one will never understand that her version of love only feels good to her and completely disregards the needs of the poor people she purports to love, and therefore isn't love at all.
February 15, 2022
This piece of autofiction deals with an issue I see a lot of in books today, namely women who have children then find that it’s hard work and maybe not as fulfilling as their art making was. (Ok - so deal with it already.) In this case, the narrator also has some unresolved grief over the deaths of her parents - her father of cancer and her mother from opioid addiction. What follows is a very disjointed and self-indulgent journey that I had trouble understanding or sympathizing with.
September 29, 2021
4.5
So I don't mind admitting I'm superficial enough that I read this novel based almost solely on its incredibly awesome title. Hey, there are a lot worse reasons to pick up a novel.
Here's how it started:
Me, after about 10 pages: Ah, man is this gonna be just another one of these self-indulgent, self-important pieces of autofiction?
Here's how it's going:
Also me, halfway through, and riveted: Okay, yeah, it is, but it's also really good!
If you do some googling, you'll learn that the real-person writer Claire Vaye Watkins' father really was one of Charles Manson's right-hand men, and this novel gives a long story about her/the narrator's parents, how they met, etc., right at the beginning. So right off the bad the autofiction/memoir line is a little blurred. In these autofiction novels that seem to be so trendy these days, you always wonder where the line between reality and fiction is, which I realize is not productive to your reading experience. But I can't help it. It sort of feels like you're being tricked a little, but not in a nefarious way. (Of course, to most writers, readers trying to figure out what's real and not is beside the point — and in fact, is probably supremely irritating to them.)
Anyway, that line is further blurred because the rest of the novel is about a character named Claire Vaye Watkins (also a writer). The character Claire and her husband have just had a baby, and now has had enough — she feels trapped, confined, and felled by postpartum depression.
When she travels to her hometown of Reno for an author event, she hangs out with some of her old friends, does mushrooms, and slowly realizes she can't go back to her former life. So now what? That's what the rest of the novel is — her just trying (or not really trying, just drifting) to figure out her life.
All the while, she contemplates a series of letters her mother, who has since died of a opioid overdose, wrote to her mother's cousin (reproduced between chapters) when her mother was a teenager in Las Vegas in the 1970s. And we see the apple maybe hasn't fallen far from the tree.
Yes, so once you get past trying to figure out what's fiction and not, you'll find a really sharply written story about returning to your roots. When you start slowly deviating from who you think you are, how do you get back to who you want yourself to be?
I enjoyed this -- a lot more than I thought I might after the first few pages. It's an acutely observed, quickly paced, clever, often funny, often raunchy, and really entertaining read.
PS. My favorite quote from the novel: "Love is a fucking hassle."
PSS. My second favorite quote from the novel: "I am not choosing darkness but darkness is choosing me."
So I don't mind admitting I'm superficial enough that I read this novel based almost solely on its incredibly awesome title. Hey, there are a lot worse reasons to pick up a novel.
Here's how it started:
Me, after about 10 pages: Ah, man is this gonna be just another one of these self-indulgent, self-important pieces of autofiction?
Here's how it's going:
Also me, halfway through, and riveted: Okay, yeah, it is, but it's also really good!
If you do some googling, you'll learn that the real-person writer Claire Vaye Watkins' father really was one of Charles Manson's right-hand men, and this novel gives a long story about her/the narrator's parents, how they met, etc., right at the beginning. So right off the bad the autofiction/memoir line is a little blurred. In these autofiction novels that seem to be so trendy these days, you always wonder where the line between reality and fiction is, which I realize is not productive to your reading experience. But I can't help it. It sort of feels like you're being tricked a little, but not in a nefarious way. (Of course, to most writers, readers trying to figure out what's real and not is beside the point — and in fact, is probably supremely irritating to them.)
Anyway, that line is further blurred because the rest of the novel is about a character named Claire Vaye Watkins (also a writer). The character Claire and her husband have just had a baby, and now has had enough — she feels trapped, confined, and felled by postpartum depression.
When she travels to her hometown of Reno for an author event, she hangs out with some of her old friends, does mushrooms, and slowly realizes she can't go back to her former life. So now what? That's what the rest of the novel is — her just trying (or not really trying, just drifting) to figure out her life.
All the while, she contemplates a series of letters her mother, who has since died of a opioid overdose, wrote to her mother's cousin (reproduced between chapters) when her mother was a teenager in Las Vegas in the 1970s. And we see the apple maybe hasn't fallen far from the tree.
Yes, so once you get past trying to figure out what's fiction and not, you'll find a really sharply written story about returning to your roots. When you start slowly deviating from who you think you are, how do you get back to who you want yourself to be?
I enjoyed this -- a lot more than I thought I might after the first few pages. It's an acutely observed, quickly paced, clever, often funny, often raunchy, and really entertaining read.
PS. My favorite quote from the novel: "Love is a fucking hassle."
PSS. My second favorite quote from the novel: "I am not choosing darkness but darkness is choosing me."
March 14, 2022
(1.5) What a letdown after Gold Fame Citrus, one of my favourite novels of 2015. Despite the amazing title and promising setup – autofiction that reflects on postpartum depression and her Mojave Desert upbringing as a daughter of one of the Manson Family cult members – this is indulgent, misguided, and largely unreadable.
A writer named Claire Vaye Watkins flies to Nevada to give a lecture and leaves her husband and baby daughter behind – for good? To commemorate her mother Martha, who died of an opiate overdose, she reprints Martha’s 1970s letters, which are unspeakably boring. I feel like Watkins wanted to write a memoir but didn’t give herself permission to choose nonfiction, so tried to turn her character Claire’s bad behaviour into a feminist odyssey of sexual freedom and ended up writing such atrocious lines as the below:
Her vagina dentata (a myth, or a real condition?!) becomes a bizarre symbol of female power and rage. I could only bear to skim this.
Some lines I liked:
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
A writer named Claire Vaye Watkins flies to Nevada to give a lecture and leaves her husband and baby daughter behind – for good? To commemorate her mother Martha, who died of an opiate overdose, she reprints Martha’s 1970s letters, which are unspeakably boring. I feel like Watkins wanted to write a memoir but didn’t give herself permission to choose nonfiction, so tried to turn her character Claire’s bad behaviour into a feminist odyssey of sexual freedom and ended up writing such atrocious lines as the below:
“I mostly boinked millennial preparers of beverages and schlepped to book festivals to hook up with whatever adequate rando lurked at the end of my signing line. This was what our open marriage looked like”
“‘Psychedelics tend to find me when I need them,’ she said, sending a rush of my blood to my vulva.”
Her vagina dentata (a myth, or a real condition?!) becomes a bizarre symbol of female power and rage. I could only bear to skim this.
Some lines I liked:
Listen: I am a messenger from the future. I am you in ten years. Pay attention! Don’t fetishize marriage and babies. Don’t succumb to the axial tilt of monogamy! I don’t pretend to know the details of your…situation, but I guarantee you, you’re as free as you’ll ever be. Have sex with anyone you want. Enjoy the fact that it might happen any minute. You could have sex with a man, a woman, both—tonight!
I went from being raised by a pack of coyotes to a fellowship at Princeton where I sat next to John McPhee at a dinner and we talked about rocks and he wasn’t at all afraid of me.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
February 23, 2022
Is really hard for me to dislike books, I guess you can tell by my, former, 4.37 average rating, but this one? Hated it.
From the premise it seemed like a book I was going to be obsessed with, an unlikable narrator that has problems with motherhood, a complicated relationship with her mother, and plus her father being part of the Manson cult which sounded intriguing.
The thing is that we didnt got that, instead we got to know about her vagina having teeth and the random letters her mom sent to a friend. It had a lot of potential but it was wasted, she could have talked more about her feelings towards the main topics instead of making us read about stuff that weren't related to anything really, we only got some paragraphs about how she felt by ditching her daugther, or how her mother was, it would have been nice to see more of their relationship and see if what was happening now was related to that.
I think you would like this if you just like to read about people's life? This felt a lot like a memoir, not only because of the same names but because it reads like one, dont know if I would have enjoyed it more if it was marketed as a memoir but, okay i guess.
Overall, really disappointing, I should have trusted my instincts, and the goodreads rating, but I also need to know why I dislike stuff, right?
From the premise it seemed like a book I was going to be obsessed with, an unlikable narrator that has problems with motherhood, a complicated relationship with her mother, and plus her father being part of the Manson cult which sounded intriguing.
The thing is that we didnt got that, instead we got to know about her vagina having teeth and the random letters her mom sent to a friend. It had a lot of potential but it was wasted, she could have talked more about her feelings towards the main topics instead of making us read about stuff that weren't related to anything really, we only got some paragraphs about how she felt by ditching her daugther, or how her mother was, it would have been nice to see more of their relationship and see if what was happening now was related to that.
I think you would like this if you just like to read about people's life? This felt a lot like a memoir, not only because of the same names but because it reads like one, dont know if I would have enjoyed it more if it was marketed as a memoir but, okay i guess.
Overall, really disappointing, I should have trusted my instincts, and the goodreads rating, but I also need to know why I dislike stuff, right?
April 19, 2023
It’s funny, because at one point, the narrator is in her head because she remembers a book review where her writing is called “overwrought” - and that’s exactly how I feel about this book! Man, do I find it tedious. Like, I get it - woman with PPD is spiraling and so she free associates about her family, her racial identity, her role as a mother and a wife, etc. Turns out, her own mother went through similar existential dread, so the book examines this ancestral trauma, pitching back and forth through time.
The concept is interesting. But the style here just isn’t for me. The writing feels sincere - I mean, the narrator and the author share a name - but also the tone comes across as navel-gazing to me. It reminds me of No One Is Talking About This, which I also don’t care for, but which does drop a major pathos bomb. That book examines society’s inherent selfishness and blasé attitude in the face of tragedy - this one examines an individual’s selfishness in a way that made for the most unpleasant reading experience I’ve had in years.
To elaborate on this point about self-centeredness - at one point, the narrator describes her complex feelings around motherhood and writes that she doesn’t need her baby anymore. She does not elaborate on this point, in favor about waxing poetic about nature. And no one questions her or challenges her motivations. Even if that sentiment about motherhood is honest, the fact that it’s written as a throwaway line is gross to me. I’m not saying writing has to be sterilized and Saran-wrapped - just that even if I get it, I don’t have to like it. Similar point - she agonizes about her privilege, but then goes on constant drug-fueled benders. As if her ability to run away from everything in her life isn’t belied by privilege!
One may say - but Sara, you don’t have to like or agree with or empathize with a main character in order to be entertained by a book and find joy in the experience. The thing is - I didn’t. Again, the language is so flowery, it feels like work. (Except for when it’s suddenly scatalogical and gross out of nowhere - which to me, comes across as more of a shock tactic than anything.) As I read, I couldn’t keep all of the side characters straight - but what does it matter, they all uses drugs or art or sex to escape from having to engage with the world or other people in meaningful ways. Point is, this gets old real fast, and I wasn’t really invested in what happened to anyone in the book. I zoned out for much of the final 60 pages, which meander into nowhere - on top of everything, the stream-of-consciousness writing is confusing and difficult to follow.
There are a few parts I did connect to - there’s one passage about the narrator’s ex-boyfriend, where she describes how there are parts of a person we willfully ignore, and other parts we never get to see. Late in the book, she describes how redwood trees are sad because they’re rooted to the ground, while people get to move around - and it serves as a metaphor for her restlessness. So there are definitely moments of poignancy and universal truth. But just because this book isn’t completely without merit, doesn’t mean I have to compromise my largely negative feelings about it. Some authors may say these visceral feelings are a win - they would rather evoke revulsion than nothing at all - but since I didn’t find the writing engaging, I feel this argument is without merit.
I can honestly tell you the best thing about this book is the title, which is gorgeous and suggests a depth that I never found within the actual pages. Not every book is for every person, but that said, I can’t in good faith recommend this.
The concept is interesting. But the style here just isn’t for me. The writing feels sincere - I mean, the narrator and the author share a name - but also the tone comes across as navel-gazing to me. It reminds me of No One Is Talking About This, which I also don’t care for, but which does drop a major pathos bomb. That book examines society’s inherent selfishness and blasé attitude in the face of tragedy - this one examines an individual’s selfishness in a way that made for the most unpleasant reading experience I’ve had in years.
To elaborate on this point about self-centeredness - at one point, the narrator describes her complex feelings around motherhood and writes that she doesn’t need her baby anymore. She does not elaborate on this point, in favor about waxing poetic about nature. And no one questions her or challenges her motivations. Even if that sentiment about motherhood is honest, the fact that it’s written as a throwaway line is gross to me. I’m not saying writing has to be sterilized and Saran-wrapped - just that even if I get it, I don’t have to like it. Similar point - she agonizes about her privilege, but then goes on constant drug-fueled benders. As if her ability to run away from everything in her life isn’t belied by privilege!
One may say - but Sara, you don’t have to like or agree with or empathize with a main character in order to be entertained by a book and find joy in the experience. The thing is - I didn’t. Again, the language is so flowery, it feels like work. (Except for when it’s suddenly scatalogical and gross out of nowhere - which to me, comes across as more of a shock tactic than anything.) As I read, I couldn’t keep all of the side characters straight - but what does it matter, they all uses drugs or art or sex to escape from having to engage with the world or other people in meaningful ways. Point is, this gets old real fast, and I wasn’t really invested in what happened to anyone in the book. I zoned out for much of the final 60 pages, which meander into nowhere - on top of everything, the stream-of-consciousness writing is confusing and difficult to follow.
There are a few parts I did connect to - there’s one passage about the narrator’s ex-boyfriend, where she describes how there are parts of a person we willfully ignore, and other parts we never get to see. Late in the book, she describes how redwood trees are sad because they’re rooted to the ground, while people get to move around - and it serves as a metaphor for her restlessness. So there are definitely moments of poignancy and universal truth. But just because this book isn’t completely without merit, doesn’t mean I have to compromise my largely negative feelings about it. Some authors may say these visceral feelings are a win - they would rather evoke revulsion than nothing at all - but since I didn’t find the writing engaging, I feel this argument is without merit.
I can honestly tell you the best thing about this book is the title, which is gorgeous and suggests a depth that I never found within the actual pages. Not every book is for every person, but that said, I can’t in good faith recommend this.
June 20, 2022
I liked the last chapter of this book a lot actually. I think I see what she was trying to do with the rest of this novel but it didn't work for me, unfortunately.
In the end, it felt like a disjointed collections of vignettes strung together to form a novel. And I do believe some of these chapters were published as standalone stories in various publications and literary journals before this book was published in its entirety.
I found it too modern for my taste, both in content and form. It felt like something that would age rather quickly because of how 'relevant' and 'timely' it was trying to be. Like a series of confessional blog posts that were edited into an auto-fictional novel that are interesting perhaps to read about either if you know the person well or you are particularly interested in the time/place that person is writing about. But outside of that context, it lacks the relevance that it assumes it holds.
In the end, it felt like a disjointed collections of vignettes strung together to form a novel. And I do believe some of these chapters were published as standalone stories in various publications and literary journals before this book was published in its entirety.
I found it too modern for my taste, both in content and form. It felt like something that would age rather quickly because of how 'relevant' and 'timely' it was trying to be. Like a series of confessional blog posts that were edited into an auto-fictional novel that are interesting perhaps to read about either if you know the person well or you are particularly interested in the time/place that person is writing about. But outside of that context, it lacks the relevance that it assumes it holds.
December 2, 2021
I can see why people think this book is about being a mother, but it really felt more about being a daughter and the deep power of the family myth. I grew up in some of the places this took place with a similar relationship to my mom, so a lot of reading this was like reading a doppelgänger’s diaries. I was not expecting my old high school to show up and yet there it was!
I think I can also see why this was weird and confusing for some people- at points it felt like two different books being joined at the seams. I think people are just like that though- the myth of the past is remembered in a fuzzier way than the present is experienced.
This one was really special!
I think I can also see why this was weird and confusing for some people- at points it felt like two different books being joined at the seams. I think people are just like that though- the myth of the past is remembered in a fuzzier way than the present is experienced.
This one was really special!
November 13, 2021
Perfect for fans of “stream of conscious” writing! Vegas, the desert and feminist- deeply unsettling.
October 20, 2021
Portions of this book have been previously published as stand alone pieces, and that does not surprise me. I LOVED two of them: the post partum depression scale and I love you but I’ve chosen darkness. LOVED them. And I very actively disliked everything else
October 21, 2021
3.5 stars
Claire has just given birth to her child and is suffering from post-partum depression. She travels to her hometown of Reno, Nevada for an author's event where she meets up with some former friends, eats some mushrooms, and hallucinates in the desert. Suddenly Claire realizes that she does not want to go back to her life of being a mother and wife.
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness is a brilliant fusion of autobiography and fiction. The first part of the book introduces the reader to Claire's parents and how they met. Next up is the story of Claire traveling to Reno while she does some soul searching. The chapters also alternate with a series of letter’s that Claire’s mother wrote before she died of an Opiod overdose.
I love it when an author takes a serious topic and does the impossible: makes it humorous. Here, the author has taken motherhood, specifically ppd and made it hilarious. I personally suffered from post partum depression after I had my last child so I found much of what Claire was feeling as highly relateable. Also I feel as if a lot of mothers daydream about doing what Claire did in this story but could not or would not ever do it.
Claire Vaye Watkins is a very talented author. This book is wildly imaginative yet brutally raw. Cleverly written and wildly imaginative. I feel as if many women (especially) mothers will find Claire as a kindred spirit and will connect to her beautiful, and honest storytelling.
I would highly recommend this book to all readers of literary fiction as well as fans of dark humor.
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness was published on October 5 and is available now. A massive thanks to Riverhead Books for the gifted copy of this extraordinary book!
Claire has just given birth to her child and is suffering from post-partum depression. She travels to her hometown of Reno, Nevada for an author's event where she meets up with some former friends, eats some mushrooms, and hallucinates in the desert. Suddenly Claire realizes that she does not want to go back to her life of being a mother and wife.
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness is a brilliant fusion of autobiography and fiction. The first part of the book introduces the reader to Claire's parents and how they met. Next up is the story of Claire traveling to Reno while she does some soul searching. The chapters also alternate with a series of letter’s that Claire’s mother wrote before she died of an Opiod overdose.
I love it when an author takes a serious topic and does the impossible: makes it humorous. Here, the author has taken motherhood, specifically ppd and made it hilarious. I personally suffered from post partum depression after I had my last child so I found much of what Claire was feeling as highly relateable. Also I feel as if a lot of mothers daydream about doing what Claire did in this story but could not or would not ever do it.
Claire Vaye Watkins is a very talented author. This book is wildly imaginative yet brutally raw. Cleverly written and wildly imaginative. I feel as if many women (especially) mothers will find Claire as a kindred spirit and will connect to her beautiful, and honest storytelling.
I would highly recommend this book to all readers of literary fiction as well as fans of dark humor.
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness was published on October 5 and is available now. A massive thanks to Riverhead Books for the gifted copy of this extraordinary book!
October 11, 2021
Horrible
October 12, 2021
Surprisingly terrible, roughly the worst novel that an author this talented is capable of writing.
April 4, 2022
I've got to learn to DNF books like this. The only reason it's two stars is because I finished it. I reserve 1-star ratings for DNF.
October 16, 2021
Thoroughly dislikable narrator, disjointed plot, and no hope of redemption. Great title, though.
June 10, 2024
This one is a LOT. And also a lot of nothing? The polarities, they call to me. What an interesting exercise in reversed gender roles, selfish Kerouac/Odysseus vibes, and what it means to find purpose in place and self.
Concept: ★★★★★
Writing style: ★★★★★
Plot/Pacing: ★★★
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness is a book that called to me. On the shelves in my local indie, I held the cover in my hands more than once and thought to myself, hmmm, I wonder if I should read this.
The title? Flawless. The cover design? Iconic. The blurb? ...Less so for me, a woman not interested in stories of motherhood. But the focus on anti-motherhood? Okay, maybe.
I dickered back and forth over several months on this. I don't read a lot of literary fiction, I definitely don't read stories that center on any element of motherhood, and I hesitate to take chances on semi-experimental writing styles when it's literary fiction without any speculative elements.
If you're wondering why I'm telling you so many random details about my reading preferences for what is supposed to be a review of this book, I promise it has a purpose.
I’m attempting to highlight that I think this book hasn't found its niche readership yet. The reviews for this book are so low! From what I can tell, it's for a variety of reasons. (I'm not knocking the reasons.) The niche group that I think should pick up this book are people like me—we like a good memoir every once in a while, we are not attached to motherhood in any way, we don't need a likeable female narrator, and we like a good reversed gender role moment. We're not Literary Readers, but we enjoy smart writing. The pretentiousness and selfishly absorbed mentality of the meandering academic doesn't turn us off. People like that, people like me—this book's for us.
There's no other way to put this: I found this narrator's voice compelling as hell.
I don't want to be her friend. I wouldn't trust her to watch my cats on vacation. I'm not even sure I'd trust her to make it to a dinner reservation. But reading about her life implosion and smart-yet-meandering musings on existential dread and selfhood? Fascinating.
I think there's something to be said for an female author telling a story like this. How many Kerouacs does one world need of men absconding from their responsibilities and imploding their lives at great stress to their loved ones? So many. But how many modern women stories are there from the complicated (and yes, "unlikable") perspective of a mother tasked with motherhood who abandons her child seemingly without regret or reflection? What does that say about our internal and external expectations of women in society that we can't view this story without an ugly reaction?
Whether you agree with the author, like her, or even believe her story is close to real life vs. a fiction, this kind of tale lives in the uncomfortable spaces. It's intentional, it's ugly. And it's compellingly written in the way that all trainwrecks are. You can't stop watching.
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Concept: ★★★★★
Writing style: ★★★★★
Plot/Pacing: ★★★
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness is a book that called to me. On the shelves in my local indie, I held the cover in my hands more than once and thought to myself, hmmm, I wonder if I should read this.
The title? Flawless. The cover design? Iconic. The blurb? ...Less so for me, a woman not interested in stories of motherhood. But the focus on anti-motherhood? Okay, maybe.
I dickered back and forth over several months on this. I don't read a lot of literary fiction, I definitely don't read stories that center on any element of motherhood, and I hesitate to take chances on semi-experimental writing styles when it's literary fiction without any speculative elements.
If you're wondering why I'm telling you so many random details about my reading preferences for what is supposed to be a review of this book, I promise it has a purpose.
I’m attempting to highlight that I think this book hasn't found its niche readership yet. The reviews for this book are so low! From what I can tell, it's for a variety of reasons. (I'm not knocking the reasons.) The niche group that I think should pick up this book are people like me—we like a good memoir every once in a while, we are not attached to motherhood in any way, we don't need a likeable female narrator, and we like a good reversed gender role moment. We're not Literary Readers, but we enjoy smart writing. The pretentiousness and selfishly absorbed mentality of the meandering academic doesn't turn us off. People like that, people like me—this book's for us.
There's no other way to put this: I found this narrator's voice compelling as hell.
I don't want to be her friend. I wouldn't trust her to watch my cats on vacation. I'm not even sure I'd trust her to make it to a dinner reservation. But reading about her life implosion and smart-yet-meandering musings on existential dread and selfhood? Fascinating.
I think there's something to be said for an female author telling a story like this. How many Kerouacs does one world need of men absconding from their responsibilities and imploding their lives at great stress to their loved ones? So many. But how many modern women stories are there from the complicated (and yes, "unlikable") perspective of a mother tasked with motherhood who abandons her child seemingly without regret or reflection? What does that say about our internal and external expectations of women in society that we can't view this story without an ugly reaction?
Whether you agree with the author, like her, or even believe her story is close to real life vs. a fiction, this kind of tale lives in the uncomfortable spaces. It's intentional, it's ugly. And it's compellingly written in the way that all trainwrecks are. You can't stop watching.
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May 20, 2024
I was fairly disappointed. That is such a killer title, and it doesn't really go into it.
FULL REVIEW TO COME
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Reading notes along the way...
◘ I love you but I've chosen darkness
◘ That is such a killer title
◘ MEH I'm tired of reading about motherhood 😭
◘ This large portion of history shoehorned into the first quarter of the book is really boring to me...
◘ Omg I love this girl's mother..."perhaps we should view them at night" LOL
◘ "Get off me" as in "you cannot be on me because you are on your own"
◘ Generational trauma...she was swimming in her mother's pain. She died where the amarosa river died not far from where it was born.
◘ "My b**** mama" part...woah.
◘ There's parts of this I really like, certain moments in this author's writing where I feel like she really hits on something poignant. But a lot the book reads like filler to me.
◘ "Don't fetishize marriage and babies"
◘ "My problem is..." portion....💯💯💯
◘ "Knowing it up top I mean. In the deep you always knew, your body knows." YESSSS
◘ • What was the whole thing about Charles Manson in the first quarter? I didn't realize they were talking about Charles Manson that whole part and only realized afterwards so it totally went over my head.
◘ • Also I am confused whether this is fiction...because the author credited on the front cover of the book is mentioned by name as a character in the book.
◘ ...okay so the part that I am at..44% they are tripping on mushrooms so that's why this part is reading really all over the place.
◘ Disappointed in the title reveal. Chapter before 59%. Title chapter. Doesn't really go into the title.
◘ Too much of characters doing drugs or generally being sleezy. It's like okay we get it already, yall are in open marriages and like to smoke weed.
◘ 1973 portions...a LOT of this is just filler.
◘ Blechhhh I hate reading about the mc and "her biologist". Gross 😬
◘ I firmly believe there is something magical about the desert. I really appreciate the atmosphere in this book. I also liked the narrative on generational trauma and a woman's experience being passed down in lineage through the body. And even if you don't know her you know her through your bones.
◘ It just makes me really sad that's how it ends. That she just ditched her husband and daughter to go live solo in the desert and smoke drugs and write or whatever her purpose is out there, and thats her character arc. Like I know men leave there wife and kids all the time and we barely bat an eyelash so I'm not trying to judge her more harshly just because she's a woman and woman have to be "nurturing mothers" all the time or they're demons, ...but it just makes me so sad to think of her daughter. But maybe it WAS better for her daughter in the long run FOR her to leave....vs how she grew up with HER toxic mom.
FULL REVIEW TO COME
.
.
.
Reading notes along the way...
◘ I love you but I've chosen darkness
◘ That is such a killer title
◘ MEH I'm tired of reading about motherhood 😭
◘ This large portion of history shoehorned into the first quarter of the book is really boring to me...
◘ Omg I love this girl's mother..."perhaps we should view them at night" LOL
◘ "Get off me" as in "you cannot be on me because you are on your own"
◘ Generational trauma...she was swimming in her mother's pain. She died where the amarosa river died not far from where it was born.
◘ "My b**** mama" part...woah.
◘ There's parts of this I really like, certain moments in this author's writing where I feel like she really hits on something poignant. But a lot the book reads like filler to me.
◘ "Don't fetishize marriage and babies"
◘ "My problem is..." portion....💯💯💯
◘ "Knowing it up top I mean. In the deep you always knew, your body knows." YESSSS
◘ • What was the whole thing about Charles Manson in the first quarter? I didn't realize they were talking about Charles Manson that whole part and only realized afterwards so it totally went over my head.
◘ • Also I am confused whether this is fiction...because the author credited on the front cover of the book is mentioned by name as a character in the book.
◘ ...okay so the part that I am at..44% they are tripping on mushrooms so that's why this part is reading really all over the place.
◘ Disappointed in the title reveal. Chapter before 59%. Title chapter. Doesn't really go into the title.
◘ Too much of characters doing drugs or generally being sleezy. It's like okay we get it already, yall are in open marriages and like to smoke weed.
◘ 1973 portions...a LOT of this is just filler.
◘ Blechhhh I hate reading about the mc and "her biologist". Gross 😬
◘ I firmly believe there is something magical about the desert. I really appreciate the atmosphere in this book. I also liked the narrative on generational trauma and a woman's experience being passed down in lineage through the body. And even if you don't know her you know her through your bones.
◘ It just makes me really sad that's how it ends. That she just ditched her husband and daughter to go live solo in the desert and smoke drugs and write or whatever her purpose is out there, and thats her character arc. Like I know men leave there wife and kids all the time and we barely bat an eyelash so I'm not trying to judge her more harshly just because she's a woman and woman have to be "nurturing mothers" all the time or they're demons, ...but it just makes me so sad to think of her daughter. But maybe it WAS better for her daughter in the long run FOR her to leave....vs how she grew up with HER toxic mom.
June 29, 2021
a beautiful book, exploring postpartum depression, a dead manson family member, vaginal teeth and a tenure track professor’s escape to the desert. stunningly written with lots of heart in all the ways u can expect from claire vaye watkins. feels very special and personal since much of the novel seems to draw from watkins’s life and the protagonist is named claire vaye watkins too. often simultaneously bleak and hilarious. in the end it wraps up so beautifully i forgave my minor gripes with what felt like a kinda unbalanced narrative structure and the inclusion of dozens of pages of letters the narrator’s mother had written as a girl which i honestly found myself racing thru to get back to the rest of the book. made me want to make my way to the desert too, or to a place as full of the vibrant intergenerational history watkins weaves together into this novel
January 5, 2022
Dithered over rating this but fuck it. There were parts I didn’t care for, but Watkins’ words are alive on the page. It’s messy and wild and quite brilliant.
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