Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts
Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts
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Elegy, Southwest

Author: Madeleine Watts

Narrator: Marcella Black

Unabridged: 8 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/18/2025

Categories: Fiction, Nature, Women


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.

About Madeleine Watts

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Suz on February 27, 2025

Truly an elegy, this is a haunting novel is deeply entrenched in loss and love. Embarking on a road trip, a seemingly happy couple with lots of love left navigate their way through America’s southwest. The use of our perilous climate and the ruins of which they drive through, the decrepit surrounds......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on February 26, 2025

So beautiful that it hurt. I almost wish I had read this in a single day, but I worry that would have been too destructive for me. This was a hard-hitting reflection on grief that I felt so strongly. When I put the book down, I had tears in my eyes and my chest hurt. The feeling of loss steadily bui......more

Goodreads review by Therearenobadbooks on September 22, 2024

When I saw this cover, I couldn't let go. After reading it, I think it's perfect because it made me feel the same: both the artwork and the story. It's hard to review without giving spoilers because repeating the blurb doesn't express how much this book sneaked on me and I related to it, making me w......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on March 20, 2025

Elegy, Southwest is an excellent example of literary fiction. Our narrator and her partner embark on a road trip almost a year after her mother-in-law's death from cancer, in order for our narrator to study the Colorado River for her dissertation and for her husband to check in on an artist for the......more

Goodreads review by City Elf Reader (Ryan) on April 28, 2025

I never do this, but about 30% in I skipped to the end and read the final chapter, I don’t feel like I missed that much, honestly. I can appreciate what the author was trying to do here, but it was a bit too dreary for me (of course, this is a novel about climate change and grief). I needed some lev......more