Claire Vaye Watkins
Hachette
Otago Daily Times, September 24th 2015
Gold, fame, citrus: the central icons of Californian life are echoed in the title of Claire Vaye Watkins’ debut novel. But they are a distant memory in this bleak and arid futuristic fable.
The book’s central character, Luz Dunne, was once the poster-child of the environmental movement, chosen at birth to represent the generations that the numerous water reclamation and engineering schemes are intended to save the state. But all attempts have failed and California has been abandoned, leaving the few remaining inhabitants to scrabble in the dust and dream of rain. When Luz eventually leaves, accompanied by her partner Ray and the strange child, Ig, whom they have liberated from a feral group, they are stranded in the great Dune Sea that borders the state. Ray is lost to the salt flats, but Luz and Ig are rescued and taken in by an itinerant community that dwells on fringes of the slowly advancing desert. The settlement is sustained by a man called Levi, who is able to sense the presence of the transitory streams that flow beneath the sand, and who has detailed the new and fantastic biosphere that has developed in the dunes. Levi sees Luz and Ig as the perfect symbols to promote this new world, but it is not clear whether he is a prophet or a madman, and Luz must eventually choose what (and who) to sacrifice to realise her dreams.
Maybe it’s just that I have just read too many of these dystopian fictions recently, but I found little to redeem the bleaknessof the future Gold Fame Citrus presents. Although Watkins uses a range of techniques to supplement the central narrative voice, including a Greek chorus of villagers, haiku-like lists, anonymous clinical notes and extracts from Levi’s taxonomy of the deserts’ unique fauna, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d heard this tale before. The environmental questions she poses are important, but spring feels like the wrong time for such depressing fare, and I’m ashamed to say this was a book that I struggled to finish.
https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/futuristic-tale-gives-feeling-deja-vu
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