Melissa Broder describes her third novel, Death Valley, as “a send-up of autofiction”. Its opening section sticks loosely to Broder’s life: an unnamed LA-based novelist drives out into the desert on a research trip for her new book. Her father is in an intensive care unit, just as Broder’s was while she was writing Death Valley. Her husband has a mysterious chronic illness, just as Broder’s does. But about 40 pages in, things take a turn for the surreal. While on a hike, the protagonist encounters a giant cactus. And inside the cactus she meets her father in child form.
So begins a witty, psychedelic exploration of grief – the wackiest book yet in an oeuvre that includes 2018’s cult favourite The Pisces, about a woman falling in love with a merman. For Broder, the harsh Californian desert provided the perfect backdrop for a story about a woman navigating complex feelings of, as she puts it, “anticipatory grief”. As she says: “We are powerless over our emotions. We are powerless over how long grief is going to last. And we are powerless over nature. But although the desert can appear desolate, it is actually teeming with life – you have to learn how to navigate that terrain.”
