Melissa Broder on Grief and Her New Novel

Melissa Broder describes her third novel, Death Valley, as “a send-up of autofiction”. Its opening section sticks loosely to Broder’s life: an unnamed LA-based novelist drives out into the desert on a research trip for her new book. Her father is in an intensive care unit, just as Broder’s was while she was writing Death Valley. Her husband has a mysterious chronic illness, just as Broder’s does. But about 40 pages in, things take a turn for the surreal. While on a hike, the protagonist encounters a giant cactus. And inside the cactus she meets her father in child form.