This is my first encounter with Melissa Broder. I really want to read The Pisces, but it wasn’t available yet, so I put it on hold and opted for this one instead. I love surrealism, magical realism, unlikable characters, and the desert, so I figured I’d love this. It was a decent read, but it fell short of my expectations.
There are a few things to like about Death Valley: the MC/protagonist is snarky and self-aware and kind of an asshole – a winning combination in my opinion. Her first-person narration didn’t try to make excuses for her dysfunction. Or her weird habit of talking to herself and inanimate objects. All good stuff. The setting is my favorite part of this book. Broder captures the arid, lackadaisical-until-it-tries-to-kill-you vibe of the desert, and the quirkiness of the people who usually inhabit it.
The plot revolves around a woman writer who goes to the desert to decompress and ‘get out of L.A.’ as her father recovers in the ICU. She’s also dealing with a chronically ill husband and a neurotic mother, which she reflects upon at length with candor. While she’s in Death Valley, she stays at a Best Western – a hotel chain that I can only assume paid to have itself promoted in this novel because it serves no real purpose (aside from being a mid hotel where she’s staying), considering how often it’s named in throughout the book. Before she leaves Death Valley, the woman takes one more hike to try to find a giant cactus she’d seen previously, and ends up getting lost in the desert. She survives, finds the cactus, and then has a strange, surreal encounter with it or, rather, in it.
There is so much potential in this plot, but I’m sorry to say it didn’t quite get there. The characters felt two-dimensional, and the psychedelic aspect of her encounter with the cactus felt more like a weird dream than the life-altering experience it’s meant to be.
There are some touching reflections on the process of death and dying, as well as poignant narration around familial and romantic relationships. I just didn’t care that much about any of the characters and found the main character emotionally flat and self-absorbed – and not in the good, existential crisis kind of way. I wanted to like her, but she was kind of a drag.
Anyway, it was a decent read and I’m not sorry I read it. The good news is that The Pisces came up right after I finished this, so I’m giving Broder’s writing another chance. I’ve heard good things about her novels, and I really want to love them.