I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness: A Novel Hardcover – October 5, 2021 by Claire Vaye Watkins

Description

Author: Watkins Claire Vaye

Color: Multicolor

Package Dimensions: 19x229x522

Number Of Pages: 304

Release Date: 05-10-2021

Details: Product Description

Named a Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021 by The New York Times, USA Today, Vulture, The Week, and more!“There’s some kind of genius sorcery in this novel. It’s startlingly original, hilarious and harrowing by turns, finally transcendent. Watkins writes like an avenging angel. It’s thrilling and terrifying to stand in her wake.” —Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather

A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse—one woman’s furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood.

Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling case of postpartum depression. Her temporary escape from domestic duties and an opportunity to reconnect with old friends mutates into an extended romp away from the confines of marriage and motherhood, and a seemingly bottomless descent into the past. Deep in the Mojave Desert where she grew up, she meets her ghosts at every turn: the first love whose self-destruction still haunts her; her father, a member of the most famous cult in American history; her mother, whose native spark gutters with every passing year. She can’t go back in time to make any of it right, but what exactly is her way forward? Alone in the wilderness, at last she begins to make herself at home in the world.

Bold, tender, and often hilarious,
I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness reaffirms Watkins as one of the signal writers of our time.

Review

Advance Praise for I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness:

“Our most significant rising writer of the American West. . . .
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness is a road trip story gone wild. . . . It’s career-redefining and absolutely bonkers in all the best ways.”
—Vulture

“The brutal, arid, electric terrain of remote California and Nevada crackles across almost every page. . . . trippy and beautiful, slippery and seductive—a unique psycho-geography of a region that is integral to the American vision and yet seems to have too few literary chroniclers.”
—Vogue

“A beautifully arranged tackle box of everything Watkins does best — cut-through-the-bone narrative of family apocalypses; custom blending of the historical, the unimaginable and the impossible; enchanting, terrifying encounters with the American West.” –
Los Angeles Times

“Daring . . . Boldly imagined and authoritatively told, this ambitious novel reminds us that Watkins is one of the most visionary writers working today.”
—Esquire

“If the evocative name of the book doesn’t grab you, Vaye Watkins’ stylish prose likely will.”
—Thrillist

“A simply incredible title, and the novel within definitely lives up to it. . . . a compelling portrait of a woman on the brink.”
—Hey Alma

“[A] surreal, hilarious, and sneakily devastating hybrid of autobiography and fiction. . . . [with] a voice that blazes with ferocious wit and candor.”
—Lit Hub

“Reckless and defiantly intelligent, Watkins detonates the ties that bind. … Incandescent writing illuminates one woman’s life in flames.” —
Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“A wily fusion of autobiography and imagination. . . . [Watkins is] reckless, infuriating, ribald, incisive, and hilarious. In the spirit of Edward Abbey, Hunter Thompson, and Joy Williams, Watkins has forged a desert tale of howling pain and a chaotic quest for healing mythic in its summoning of female power in a realm of double-wides, loaded dice, broken glass, and hot springs.” —
Booklist (starred)

“There’s some kind of genius sorcery in this novel. It’s startlingly original, hilarious and harrowing by turns, finally transcendent. Watkins writes like an avenging angel. It’s thrilling and terrifying to stand in her wake.” —
Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Specula