Death Valley

A Novel

By: Melissa Broder

Narrated by: Melissa Broder

Named a Best Book of the Year 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 Chain-Gang All-Stars).

Strong voice

Our narrator was funny and had one foot squarely in mundanity and one in fantasy

Love the poetic language about humanness, love and death

Not my usual style of book to read. But I enjoyed it. I really like Melissa's poetic style, easy to follow prose, honesty, self reflection and relatability. While the trippy cactus stuff is not my thing, I could relate to the spirituality search of it all-- the search for the meaning of life, love and oneself. I had a chronically sick mother and wrestled with all the same feelings of rage and guilt and love. I also lost my father in 2019 and was very close with him. We can all hopefully relate to the death and the feelings surrounding the loss of a parent. If we do that means we have outlived our parents-- which is the way it is supposed to go. I really, really liked Milkfed. I really liked this book. I should give her first book another try. I commend Broder's honesty and relatable humanness. I like her introspection and humor. Give her a try. I also commend her on trying different genres
and styles of writing and taking a risk. That is living!

Broder is the perfect narrator!

I experienced a rocky start with this one. At first, I was turned off by some raunchy language. I just wasn’t in the mood. Reading reviews made me want to go back.

I’m happy that I did return to the story. After I turned off my “crabby lady” inner voice and listened to the story, I became intrigued. The unnamed narrator’s babbling has a deep well producing that babble.

She is a 40-something married novelist who feels she is dry of ideas. Her father is in the ICU after a devastating car crash. She is worried about her father dying. Her husband is housebound and disabled. She is stressed. So, she decides to take a short trip to Death Valley for inspiration. She expects a desert-based epiphany.

She checks herself into a Best Western. (Thank you, author Broder, for the quirky characters and abundant hotel humor.) After much self-babble, she determines a long walk in the desert might inspire her. She’s a spiritual seeker after all. She perceives “wandering around in the desert, there’s no need to play hard to get with God”. Of course there will be a fork in the road..

There’s a cactus. There are bunnies. A vicious teen bunny. There are stones, all colors. But it’s in the cactus that Broder’s imagination shines. Broder does a great job with the narrator’s self-rumination which are critical with some therapy self-talk thrown in. Her are observations unique and brilliant.

This is a meditation on loss and grief. It’s clever.

Tone of Story Was a Difficult to Figure Out Until Too Late

This made it hard to know how to take the author/character. Was it satire? Was she delusional? Clearly a little neurotic at the very least. And the profound moments came, but they were a bit too little too late. I lost my husband last year and did find some understanding and redemption in myself as a caregiver. So in that regard it was insightful. But just overall slightly off/delayed/lacking. Why do I feel as if this book will eat at me and I’ll listen again in hopes of a better understanding. The narration was on point!

People’s dreams are only interesting to themselves

It is like sitting through a friend go on about their dreamscape and their father in the hospital …some redemption in the funny descriptions and a few handy coping mechanisms, but mostly feels like listening to someone unload. This was a struggle to finish. Love her other work. A wonderful writer.