Publishers Weekly
★ 07/03/2023
In the infectious and dreamy latest from Broder (Milk Fed), a Los Angeles woman finds new ways to deal with anxiety and depression after discovering a fantastical giant cactus in the California desert. The unnamed narrator, a 40-something married novelist coping with her father’s recent car accident and his continued stay in the ICU, takes a solo road trip for some relief. She checks into a Best Western hotel in Death Valley, Calif., telling herself the excursion will also help inspire her novel in progress, which she expects to feature a desert-based epiphany. While hiking on a trail near the hotel, she sees a towering cactus and passes through a portal on its surface. Inside, she encounters a five-year-old version of her father and comforts him. It’s a funhouse warping of the care she misses from her dad, which she hasn’t had since she was a child. Later, in between successive hikes to the cactus, she has brief FaceTime calls with her father in the hospital and with her husband, and continues to feel distant from both men. During the fourth hike, she gets lost and learns to summon her survival instincts. Despite the novel’s intense interiority, Broder’s narrator is consistently companionable; the story works because she enjoys talking to herself, a personality quirk Broder finds clever ways to convey (“I am overextended and cannot fulfill your request at this time. Best, me,” she imagines writing to herself as an away message). Readers ought not to miss this magical tale of survival. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, Gernert Co. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Incandescent . . . ecstatically awake to the world’s astonishments. . . . Death Valley is a triumph, a ribald prayer for sensuality and grace in the face of profound loss, a hilarious revolt against the aggressive godlessness, dehumanization and fear plaguing our time. All ten of Melissa Broder’s finger lamps are blazing. Why not be totally changed into fire?" —Claire Vaye Watkins, The New York Times Book Review
“Melissa Broder, a genius and a sorceress, has once again written the very best book, this one about tragedy and grief and whether or not to take the road less traveled, but also the struggle to write a good novel. It’s spiritual without being full of woo-woo and also extremely funny and you should read it!!” —Samantha Irby, Vanity Fair
"Extremely funny and deeply felt." —People
"One of the best books I’ve read in years: funny, brilliant, gutting, and easily devoured over the course of one blissful afternoon." —Elle
“Sardonic, self-implicating prose that cuts to the bone is Broder’s specialty, and Death Valley is probably the funniest book you’ll ever read about getting lost and almost dying.”—The Cut
"A witty, psychedelic exploration of grief. . . riotously funny." —Guardian
“Her most profound book yet . . . Surreal, hysterical and beguiling in every sense.” —Glamour
“A hilarious and hallucinatory journey into the badlands of California. . . . Like grief itself, this book is at once surreal, absurd, lucid, and wise; it will change you.” —O, The Oprah Magazine, Best Books of 2023
“A surrealist story about anticipatory grief that is as wryly funny as it is moving. Broder curls moments of devastation softly towards moments of the mundane. . . . Broder’s third novel is a propulsive, semi-meta journey of an author balancing the sorrow of a sick husband and a father in the ICU with a looming novel deadline . . . unforgettable.”—NYLON
"Broder takes her absurdist humor to new heights as she spins a surrealist tale of emptiness, exploration and existential crisis in the California desert." —W Magazine, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023
“Broder’s own gift is for scenes and dialogue that are so natural—in that they reflect the ridiculousness and surrealism of real life—that they tip over into the uncanny. She is also very funny.” —The Los Angeles Times
"Quirky and captivating . . . [an] existential, erotic, and treacherously real journey of self-discovery and resilience in the wake of 'pending' grief. . . . Broder paints this hilarious fever dream, while still conveying a stark, tangible sense of what it means to be alive." —Condé Nast Traveler
“A profound look at caregiving and grief, but it also manages to be a very funny, quick, and engaging read. Don’t miss it.“ —theSkimm
“Broder is a comedic writer, a poet averse to stale language and an online personality tirelessly manning a churn of new quips on the familiar subject of sadness.” —Washington Post
“Think the Chronicles of Narnia, but instead of a wardrobe, it's a cactus.” —Cosmopolitan
“Funny, frank and life-affirming.” —Daily Mail
“Vividly relatable. . . . a psychological portrait of a woman trying to come to terms with the terrifying co-existence of life and death.” —Telegraph (UK)
“Death Valley is one of the funniest, most tender stories I’ve read about improbable cacti, dying fathers, and desert survival skills . . . a nuanced and authentic portrayal of grief.” —Locus Magazine
“There is nothing obvious about Broder’s searching, or the tenderness she visits on characters who fail to save those they love from pain and death.” —Annie Liontas, Electric Literature
"Bursting with jokes, abounding with existential crisis, Broder again puts forward her absurdist, provocative philosophy." —Bustle, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023
“A riotous victory . . . Broder has illuminated a tale of grief and loss with her characteristic wit and insight. The result is as dazzlingly brilliant as a desert sunset.” —Pop Matters
“Grab a tall glass of water before cracking open this surreal, darkly funny novel. . . . You'll find yourself mesmerized by the story as much as the deeper lessons beneath it.”—Good Housekeeping
“An exhilarating meditation on death, life, survival and how we rely on stories to get us through it all. It’s a triumph for Broder.” —Book Page (starred review)
"Infectious and dreamy. . . . Broder’s narrator is consistently companionable. . . . Readers ought not to miss this magical tale of survival." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“As wise in its way as any spiritualism about vision quests or finding enlightenment. . . . A 100 percent Broder take on grief and empathy: embodied but cerebral, hilarious but heart-wrenching." —Kirkus Reviews
“A journey unlike any you’ve read before. Death Valley is a beautifully wild leap into the mysterious desert that is grief.” —Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars and Friday Black
"Death Valley is a glorious mirage of a book. This is a mischievous and moving novel of prickly wonders, where the indignities of life are monumental, and the inanimate world only comes alive in the lonely glow of loss. Broder's writing is a brilliant, zany compass, leading us from the sorrow of existence toward the hilarity of someday having to die." —Hilary Leichter, author of Temporary
"Darkly funny and full of exuberant, pitch-perfect sentences, Death Valley is also a glorious departure for Melissa Broder: a heartrending exploration of daughterhood, a deep dive into anticipatory grief, and a hardcore story of survival. Broder's unforgettable new novel is vulnerable, witty, trippy, and conceptually dazzling all at once—a brilliantly inventive book from an absolutely brilliant writer." —Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light: Stories
“I’ve never read a novel that portrays grief quite like Death Valley. Melissa Broder captures both the punishing ordinariness of loss while also showing us how extraordinary it is to have been here at all. There is deep wisdom in these pages.” —Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes and The Half Moon
Library Journal
07/01/2023
Broder (Milk Fed) has written a weird and wacky treatise on grief. The protagonist is an author trying to complete her newest novel while dealing with serious family issues. Her husband has been debilitated by an undiagnosed illness for years; her father was in a terrible car accident several months earlier but has cheated death twice while remaining mostly unresponsive in the ICU; her mother deals with it all by adhering to strict superstitions. The protagonist hits the road, leaving Los Angeles, and heads to the desert, where she is delighted to find a room in her favorite hotel chain, Best Western. Written in the first person, the novel's first half details the protagonist's journey to this point. The second half is a stream of consciousness of her visit to the desert, hallucinating an enormous cactus and going inside it; very much an escape from reality. The humor is bleak, the metaphors strong, and her grief palpable. The meandering story finally arrives at a somewhat surprising, almost heartfelt ending. VERDICT Buy for demand only. For the literary sophisticate; read-alikes include the works of Banana Yoshimoto and Jeffrey Eugenides.—Stacy Alesi
Kirkus Reviews
2023-07-15
A writer whose father is dying escapes to the desert to face (or avoid) her grief and ends up with much more than she bargained for.
A woman wanders in the California desert. She hikes through scrub, shadowy dunes, the “orchestral quiet” of the rocks, plants, and animal life. Back in Los Angeles, her father is in the intensive care unit, walking the knife’s edge between life and death after a car accident. She’s also left behind a disabled husband whose illness has complicated their marriage. As the woman walks, she contemplates the natural world, the ties that bind us to the ones we love, the nature of God. She watches lizards and rabbits; she talks to rocks. She comes to a fork in the trail: One route leads back to her life in LA; the other leads deep into the ruthless desert. Which will she take? If this all sounds a bit woo woo, a taste of Burning Man with a touch of Siddhartha, fear not: This is Broder, the poet, essayist, novelist, and author of some of Twitter’s most viral bons mots as @sosadtoday. Her style mixes therapy-adjacent hyper-self-awareness, dark humor, and a jovially narcissistic approach to tragedy (“I am still the kind of the person who makes another person’s coma all about me”). It is also, among all its other guises, a book about writing: The narrator is struggling with her novel-in-progress (about a woman with an ill husband and a dying father, natch) whose structure she cannot figure out. This is not a subtle book—the protagonist is very literally walking in the valley of the shadow of death—but it’s as wise in its way as any spiritualism about vision quests or finding enlightenment.
A 100 percent Broder take on grief and empathy: embodied but cerebral, hilarious but heart-wrenching.
