Elegy, Southwest - by Madeleine Watts (Paperback)

About the Book

"A timely and urgent novel following a young married couple on a road trip through the American southwest as they grapple with the breakdown of their relationship in the shadow of environmental collapse, for fans of Rachel Cusk and Sigrid Nunez"--

Book Synopsis

A timely and urgent novel following a young married couple on a road trip through the American southwest as they grapple with the breakdown of their relationship in the shadow of environmental collapse, for fans of Rachel Cusk and Sigrid Nunez.

In November 2018, Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest. While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry.

Over the course of their trip, Eloise, beginning to suspect she might be pregnant, helplessly witnesses Lewis's descent as he struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never quite felt at home.

Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.

Review Quotes

"Stunning." -- The Guardian

"This is a rare kind of writing where every page offers something to linger on, beautiful and devastating in equal measure." -- The Financial Times

"A beautifully profound love story. A profound novel that looks at grief of this territory and of parental loss." - Service95

"Elegy, Southwest is artful and beautifully written, as are the depictions of Southwestern wastelands and the life that somehow perseveres there. There are many questions left unanswered by the end, though perhaps that's the desert for you: a longing that's never reciprocated, a need for nourishment that will never materialize." -- Chicago Review of Books

"The personal drama in Watts' second novel is inseparable from the environmental; this is love at the end of the world. Watts effectively contrasts the gorgeous flora and fauna of the American Southwest with the region's unique, characteristic precariousness. Recalling the sunny haze of Joan Didion's work, the duality of life is everywhere: joy and pain, pregnancy and death, art and science. Literary fiction ready for a changing world." -- Booklist

"Bursting with ideas and emotion, this is an accomplished tale of self-examination." -- Publishers Weekly


"This book is a fever dream, a mood, a spell, an entire climate filled with a particular kind of desert winter light-- harsh, unsparing, and beautiful. Honestly, I feel that part of me is still actually living in the book. Tremendously moving." --Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering

"Full of grit and a vivid, tender affection for the environments of the American West, Watts' urgent novel weaves a lush landscape of grief and solace. I've rarely seen a writer capture the atmosphere of climate change and loss so vividly, or the frenzied urge to leap into some form of action--all in prose that kept me glued to its pages right to the bittersweet end."- Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

"Watts is an uncommonly perceptive and daring writer. Her sensitivity to the grief of this specific territory, the desert Southwest, and its people is a profound gift." - Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness

"Watts's strikingly brilliant novel is a measured fever dream of loneliness-- private, political, razor-smart, and utterly engulfing. Watts is a prescient tour guide to human frailty, and to the climate apocalypse, and her voice is one we will most want to listen to, as people and landscapes collide with greater and great frequency and force." -- Heidi Julavits, author of Directions to Myself

"Haunting and hypnotic, absorbing and provocative, Elegy, Southwest is the novel I've been waiting for. Watts' cool, precise prose calls to mind Joan Didion and Alexandra Kleeman, but this singular novel is something new, entirely. New and breathtaking." -- Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

"A novel composed of the details that accumulate in the wake of loss: of a relationship, of a weather pattern, of a moment in time. Watts elegantly weaves a love story with deep research on its cinematic setting to ask a poignant question: What do you do with all that remains after something ends?" - Lauren Oyler, author of Fake Accounts

"An intimate chronicle of fragile lives confronting the vastness of the natural sublime and the meaning of love. " - Pitchaya Sudbanthad, author of Bangkok Wakes to Rain

"Watts has ushered in a new era of nature writing. This is an astounding, heartbreaking, and important book. You'll be different after reading it." --Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape

"A haunting meditation on the enduring nature of love in the face of cascading losses--those we can see coming and those we can't. A truly captivating and lovely novel." - Claire Boyles, author of Site Fidelity

About the Author

Madeleine Watts is the author of The Inland Sea, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her novella, Afraid of Waking It was awarded the Griffith Review Novella Prize. Her nonfiction has been published extensively in Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, Literary Hub, and Astra Magazine. She has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities.