‘X is a mishmash of hell’: Twitter star Melissa Broder on grief, ‘the musking’ and her new novel Death Valley
She rose to fame posting forlornly as @SoSadToday. Can her latest novel – inspired by the death of her father, who returns inside a cactus – really be wackier than her merman love story The Pisces? And why does she now prefer Reddit to X?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.So begins a witty, psychedelic exploration of grief – the wackiest book yet in an oeuvre that includes 2018’s cult favourite The Pisces, about a woman falling in love with a merman. For
