Melissa Broder is the author of the novels The Pisces and Milk Fed, the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize for poetry, she has written for the New York Times, Elle.com, VICE, Vogue Italia, and New York Magazine‘s The Cut. melissabroder.com / @melissabroder / @sosadtoday
Funny, frank and life-affirming * Daily Mail * [Broder] returns with her inimitable acerbic wit and keen observational eye, and Death Valley is her most profound book yet ... Surreal, hysterical and beguiling in every sense * Glamour * A modern fairytale ... One of the strengths of Death Valley is Broder’s ability to track her heroine’s emotional vulnerabilities and quirks in a manner that makes her readers familiars on the journey ... Broder is smart enough to give us a protagonist who is more hopeful than helpless, and engaging enough to keep readers wondering what she will encounter next * Guardian * The thoughts and feelings of her characters are vividly relatable ... In line with Broder’s previous work, the true substance of Death Valley is the psychological portrait of a woman trying to come to terms with the terrifying co-existence of life and death. There are, as promised, revelations about love too -- Telegraph Incandescent … A survival adventure that couldn’t have been better written by Jack London himself. Broder’s euphoric plotting and winning characters combine with a gift for desert description ... reminiscent of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. I tried to ration this book but guzzled * New York Times * Weird, unsettling and sexy, Death Valley is Melissa Broder at her imaginative best * Red Magazine * Broder writes with her customary slick humour and there are moments of real wit ... Energetically surreal * Independent * Broder’s writing is comedic and earthbound … Still, there is a profundity and tenderness to Broder’s language that tempers the dry wit * Literary Review * A journey and exploration of love, loss and grief, which is emotional, dangerous, funny, and thought-provoking. A wonderfully unique book * Heat * I’ve never read a novel that portrays grief quite like Death Valley. Somehow, Melissa Broder captures both the punishing ordinariness of loss while also showing us how extraordinary it is to have been here at all – and to love each other besides. There is deep wisdom in these pages, and I know I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time -- Mary Beth Keane, author of ASK AGAIN, YES A journey unlike any you've read before. Death Valley by Melissa Broder is a beautifully wild leap into the mysterious desert that is grief -- Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS and FRIDAY BLACK Vulnerable, witty, trippy and conceptually dazzling all at once -- Kimberly King Parsons, author of BLACK LIGHT