Death Valley is a novel about grief and the self, set in the California desert. A woman is staying in a Best Western, escaping her father in the ICU and her chronically ill husband, but without purpose. When a receptionist suggests a nearby hiking trail, the narrator finds a strange giant cactus, unusually there and with a gash that allows you to climb inside, and transfixed by the cactus, the woman is drawn back to the place again and again.
I didn’t know what to expect from this book and any summary doesn’t really give away the hazy, unreal nature of it, really capturing the sense of this character out in the desert, experiencing things that don’t seem real. The narrative keeps being interrupted both by memories and by calls from the narrator’s family members, and this all gives a real sense of the character as she reflects on her own selfish ideas of other people’s illnesses and deaths. Later in the book is a more extended sequence in the desert and this was my favourite part—I wasn’t expecting it and it was both surreal and grounded in a sense of danger. Other than this, not a huge amount happens in the novel, but it is the little details that stand out, like the contents of the Grab N Go breakfast packs.
This book won’t be for everyone, as it is fairly anticlimactic, but I liked the combination of a narrator who doesn’t know what she should be thinking and feeling with a surreal cactus and some strange details.
Fiendfully Reading 
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