Gold Fame Citrus
Ratings5
Average rating2.8
"The much-anticipated first novel from a Story Prize-winning "5 Under 35" fiction writer. In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins's story collection, Battleborn, swept nearly every award for short fiction. Now this young writer, widely heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, returns with a first novel that harnesses the sweeping vision and deep heart that made her debut so arresting to a love story set in a devastatingly imagined near future. Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most "Mojavs," prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs. Luz, once a poster child for the Bureau of Conservation and its enemies, and Ray, a veteran of the "forever war" turned surfer--squat in a starlet's abandoned mansion. Holdouts, they subsist on rationed cola and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise. The couple's fragile love somehow blooms in this arid place, and for the moment, it seems enough. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins. They head east, a route strewn with danger: sinkholes and patrolling authorities, bandits and the brutal, omnipresent sun. Ghosting after them are rumors of a visionary dowser a diviner for water and his followers, who whispers say have formed a colony at the edge of a mysterious sea of dunes. Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins's novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own"--
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
I don't think I would have finished this if I hadn't been given a review copy, and if I'm being completely honest, I pretty much skim read most of it after the half way point. The premise sounded fascinating, set in a post-apocalyptic near future America, hit by droughts and climate change. I was completely taken in by the synopsis, and so was hoping for something similar to [a:Margaret Atwood 3472 Margaret Atwood https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1282859073p2/3472.jpg]'s speculative science fiction series, MaddAddam. Sadly, this did absolutely nothing for me. Watkins must have been trying to create something edgy and unique, but in my opinion it all came together as a tedious, repetitive mess. The narrative structure and writing style was choppy and confusing, jumping between the main storyline and extracts from random documents, checklists and articles, which would have really taken me out of the story, if there had been much of one. The repetitive checklists (lists of random words going on for pages), in particular had seemingly no purpose other than adding to the overall word count. (On a side note, one of the documents, which included drawings, was really terribly formatted, meaning I had to skim many pages on my kindle to read less than a line of text. Hopefully, that will have been fixed in the final retail ebook edition though). None of the characters, dialogue or circumstances seemed believable, and most of the “science” seemed completely bizarre, verging on fantasy. I didn't find anything about any of the characters, Luz, Ray, Ig or any members of the wacky cult, striking or interesting. I was especially disappointed by the characterisation of Luz, the protagonist. Her passive, hero worship of the main male characters got old fast, and I don't understand if this was meant to be some kind of critique on expectations of gender, but it was painful/dull to read and done pretty poorly if it was.Maybe there was some interesting ideas buried away here, but this novel was too trying on my patience for me to pay much notice.
