A review by mahiccup
Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book is executed beautifully. The writing is so lush and descriptive, and I loved the playing with perspective - mostly from one POV but with interludes of others, moments of a Greek chorus style commentary, macro views of the state of current events, and micro examinations of the flora and fauna. Kind of experimental, kind of a thought experiment - a letter to California that blurs the lines between love and hate. I especially loved the beginning of Book 2 (descriptions of the desert) and the end about Luz as all of California - the desperate dreamers, the California quitters.

That being said, don't know if I was ever fully absorbed in the story. I didn't find Luz as unlikable as some other reviews, but the plot was a bit predictable and honestly seemed like a pale imitation of Parable of the Sower (now THAT's a groundbreaking post apocalyptic climate novel about womanhood and religion). I would recommend this book, but only if you love climate fiction and the Western US and flowery writing (which admittedly I do).

Some passages that caught me:

"She had thought the holes to be the burrows of chipmunks, but knew them now to be snake holes. Mammals were out. LA gone reptilian, primordial. Her father would have some scripture to quote about that."

"In the pixel promises of satellites it could be the Grand Canyon, its awesome chasms and spires, its photogenic strata, our great empty, where so many of us once stood feeling so compressed against all that vastness, so dense, wondering if there wasn't a way to breathe some room between the bits of us, where we once stood feeling the expected smallness a little, but also a headache where our eyeballs scraped against the limits of our vision, or rather of our imagination, because it was a painting we were seeing though we stood at the sanctioned rim of the real deal."

"Drained lakes, sulfur seas, yucca forests dried to paper, redwoods blighted and departed, sequoias and pinyon pines tinder for a never-satisfied wildfire. These were her people. Speculators and opportunists, carnival barkers and realtors, imag-ineers, cowards and dreamers and girls. Mojavs. Eyes peeled for the flash of ore, the flash of camera, the wet flesh of fruit. Gold, fame, citrus."

Ps. Honestly just love the title for where it fits in the "Gold God Glory"/"Guns Germs Steel" chronicle - the entry, the destruction, the exodus.