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Death Valley

By: Melissa Broder
Narrated by: Melissa Broder
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Publisher's summary

Named a Best Book of 2023 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 Friday Black).

©2023 Melissa Broder (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio
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Editorial Review

A thought-provoking fever dream
Entirely consuming and utterly transporting, Melissa Broder’s latest novel had me completely transfixed. For the few days in which I devoured this listen, all I could think about was getting back to it. The story at the outset is simple enough—a woman in her early 40s, who is coping with both a father recovering (or not) from a coma and a husband whose mysterious illness seems to be worsening by the day, heads to the California desert under the guise of seeking inspiration for the novel she is struggling to write. While on a hike, the heroine stumbles upon a strange cactus, which leads her into another realm—one in which, on some level, she will have to fight for her own survival. In this work, I found Broder to be her usual witty and darkly funny self, with an added depth of vulnerability. Against the backdrop of an unforgiving desert, she dissects the often unspoken aspects of loving a person who is chronically ill; what it is like to grieve, particularly those with which we have had complicated relationships; and even the nature of God. Somehow, within the realm of magical realism, Broder has become realer than ever before. —Madeline A., Audible Editor

What listeners say about Death Valley

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  • Overall
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    5 out of 5 stars

Strong voice

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

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

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!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

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.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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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!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Nice, Short Read

If you like listening to NPR, this is a great book for you. Both the story and the narrator remind me of This American Life.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Thoughts of a woman in the desert

For me, there was not too much of a story, and it moved very slowly.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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4stars

I really liked the first person character. The rest was just ok
Min min min

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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Monumentally Terrible

I finish every book I start. Never was that resolve so sorely tested as with Death Valley.

I would only recommend this book to a friend who had an immediate and critical need for paper; to be used for sanitary purposes.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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Couldn't tell if she was on an acid trip

I like the voice of the narrorator but the story was just such a struggle to get through. I thought this was going to be more of a fantasy book where she gets lost inside this cactus and goes into a whole other world. But definitely not that. Maybe thats why it was so hard to get through. it was like a combination of never ending story and someone on an acid trip but with out the bright colors. Nothing made sense and hard to follow. I will not read this book again that's for sure.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Boring

I listened for quite a while, but nothing grabbed my interest. Yes, I feel sorry for the main character, but that wasn’t any good reason to continue, so I did not finish. 

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