Date Of Review: December 9, 2023
Review Left On GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5885721821

Death Valley

Author: Melissa Broder
Narrator: Melissa Broder
Started: December 5, 2023
Finished: December 9, 2023
Genre: Magical Realism
Length: 5 hours
Part Of A Series: no
Type Of Book: audio
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/91239751-death-valley

Review:

When I saw this book I had to read it for the name. I live near Death Valley. Used to drive through the area she describes when I was younger. Don't know about the Best Western, but they are all over, so it is indeed a probability it's there. Never stayed in a hotel out that way as it's what folks consider a day trip length from where I live.

Now on to how I responded to the book. It is exactly what I am afraid would happen to me should I get out of the car in the area. It is a deep seeded fear too. Except I wouldn't make it back out alive.

The part iwth her Dad, Mom, & Husband. It's like she wrote about part of my life and part of my exes life. Except he didn't stick around - he left once he got tired of all the doctors, even though it was figured out what was wrong.

I'm glad this book was titled Death Valley. I wouldn't have decided to read it anyhow as this is not a genre I'm usually interested in.

Goodreads Description:

The most profound book yet from the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.

In Melissa Broder’s astounding 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, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike.

Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman 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.

This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death Valley.

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