Death Valley

Books | Fiction / Magical Realism

2.5

Melissa Broder

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New York Times ("incandescent...hilarious...a triumph"), Oprah Daily ("surreal, absurd, lucid, and wise"), Vanity Fair ("Broder [is] a genius and a sorceress"), and more! From the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief and a “magical tale of survival” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).In Melissa Broder’s astonishingly profound new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path discovered on a nearby hike. Out along the sun-scorched trail, the narrator encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious, and poignant. Death Valley is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest, and is “a journey unlike any you’ve read before” (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black).

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More Details:

Author

Melissa Broder

Pages

240

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

2023-10-03

ISBN

1668024896 9781668024898

Community ReviewsSee all

"i absolutely LOVED this book. i know that some people don’t enjoy broder’s writing style, but i think this book is revolutionary in the way she describes things. this is the only book that’s has ever elicited a physical reaction from me. i was actually THIRSTY?? like physically thirsty for water?? if that’s not a sign of good writing i don’t know what is. if you don’t really like sci-fi but like fictional exploration like me, you’ll enjoy this. a mind f*ck of a book. "

Kayley R.

"I’ll give her this: Broder’s work is often bizarre enough that it sticks with you. I think this book had a good message, but ultimately I wanted it to be more- either more fantastical or more realistic. It had moments of very striking and honest emotional turmoil, but there were equally moments of such absurdity that it lost me. Overall well-written and well done, but not my cup of tea."

Cloud Why

"Melissa Broder is a perfect author to me. This is gut-wrenching and beautifully written and weird. She just keeps getting better and sadder and better."

kelsey

"I've heard that Broder has a very love-it-or-hate-it writing style. Well, I hated it. It's supposed to be a humorous novel, but I think there was maybe one funny line in the whole book, the rest just made me cringe. There is an attempt at emotion near the end, but everything before it just causes it to fall flat. There are far better "lost and tripping out in the wilderness" books out there than Death Valley, which just felt unpleasant and gross to read. "

Heathcliff Reeds

"There were elements of this story that I liked, but overall the writing and the millennial-ness of the MC really bothered me. I liked the surrealism involving the cactus, and the people with the cactus, but there wasn’t enough of that to boost the story’s rating higher. Overall, the story lands in a very middle ground area for me, not the best but not the worst. Just kind of is."

Hailey Showalter

"3.25-- Death Valley scores major points for its quirkiness, but the protagonist's whimsical musings can only carry the story so far. Beneath the weirdness lies a rather boring man vs. nature plot line that hints at a transformational character arc that it never quite lives up to."