I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Claire Vaye Watkins Klappentext NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, VOGUE, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY , NPR, ESQUIRE , AND KIRKUS “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. Leseprobe I've tried to tell this story a bunch of times. This will be my last try, here in my garden with Moana, Lucky, Abigail and Boomerang, each naked except for Boomerang, who is cinched into a blue plastic saddle. The "garden" hardly merits the word by the standards of the house-proud resource-hoarding whites I must count myself among. My garden is mostly rock and dirt, wild, needless as Moana with so many sticks in her hair. Lucky and Abigail are Netflix properties. They have no sticks in their hair, for my daughter gave them butch haircuts last time she was here. The story starts at some point in my daughter's first year, the point perhaps at which I became aware of my inability to feel any feelings beyond those set to music by the Walt Disney Company. I'd banned Disney, its toxic messages and bankrupt values, forbid it my child long before conceiving her. Yet there I was listening to the Moana soundtrack a dozen times a day and digging it, screening the film as often as my infant's budding synapses could bear. No other text moved me as much, with the exception perhaps of Charlotte's Web, particularly the chapter called "Escape," in which Wilbur briefly breaks out of his pen and the Goose, soon to be yoked unmerrily to her eggs, urges him yonder. . . . the woods, the woods! They'll never-never-never catch you in the woods! Or maybe it starts before then. Like I said, I've tried to tell it a bunch of times. Each try takes me further from whatever it is I'm after. I finish on an alien shore with a raft of needs, reminded once again that books heal people all the time, just not usually the people who write them. I promise to need nothing from this last try. It's only a yarn for the dolls. It starts with my husband, Theo. (I've disguised his name because he innocent.) It starts with Theo in a waiting room reading over my shoulder. 1. 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...

Product details

• Authors: Claire Vaye Watkins
• Publisher: Riverhead
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 04.10.2022
• EAN: 9780593330227
• ISBN: 978-0-593-33022-7
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 131 mm x 203 mm x 20 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature