I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Claire Vaye Watkins
(Author)Description
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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Thorndike Press Large Print |
| Publish Date | January 26, 2022 |
| Pages | 397 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781432893736 |
| Dimensions | 8.5 X 5.5 X 1.0 inches | 1.3 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"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 Speculation and Weather
"This book is stupendously good. It practically vibrates in its ferocious frankness, and is so funny too that one can't help but fall for this voice, even in the pain, because of the pain, with the pain. A marvel."--Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and The Butterfly Lampshade
Praise for Claire Vaye Watkins:
The most captivating voice to come out of the West since Annie Proulx -- though it's to early Joan Didion that [Watkins] bears comparison for her arid humor and cut-to-the-chase knowingness. --Vogue
Watkins' vision . . . is mercilessly sharp. She's got a knife eye for details, a vicious talent for cutting to the throbbing vein of animal strangeness that scratches inside all of us. --NPR
Watkins writes with a brutal kind of beauty. . . . [that] forces us to confront things we'd probably rather ignore, but because we're human, we can't. --Los Angeles Times
The writing, with its tough sentimentality, is reminiscent of Denis Johnson's, but Watkins has a style of mordant observation all her own. --Harper's Bazaar
Clear-eyed and nimble in parsing the lives of her Westerners, one of Watkins's strengths is not dodging that the simple fact that love can be tragic, involving, as it does, humans so flawed, so often tender and yet incapable. --The Boston Globe
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