Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts

LONGLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NSW LITERARY AWARDS – CHRISTINA STEAD PRIZE FOR FICTION

In November 2018 Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest. While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry.

Over the course of their trip, Eloise, beginning to suspect she might be pregnant, helplessly witnesses Lewis’s descent as he struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never quite felt at home.

Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.

PRAISE FOR ELEGY, SOUTHWEST

‘enormously impressive’ – Guardian

‘Elegy, Southwest reminds us there is equal drama and heartbreak to be found in the unspoken on the road not taken.’ – Sydney Morning Herald

‘an accomplished novel, beautifully crafted and complex in its layerings and shifts in scale’ – The Saturday Paper

‘This is a beautifully lonely novel. Moving between the intimate address of the past and the present, it builds toward a devastating, deeply poignant ending.’ – ABC

‘This book is a fever dream, a mood, a spell, an entire climate filled with a particular kind of desert winter light – harsh, unsparing, and beautiful. Honestly, I feel that part of me is still actually living in the book. Tremendously moving.’ – Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering

‘Watts’ sensitive and beautifully wrought observations on the environment, love, and loss are perfectly and painfully attuned to our shifting world. This is an astounding, heartbreaking, and important book. You’ll be different after reading it.’ – Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape

‘An elegant and urgent love letter to art, writing and our dying natural world. Elegy, Southwest is a stunning and tragic story about love, death and everything in between.’ – Victoria Hannan, author of Kokomo

‘This dreamy road trip piggybacks a story of the last days of love with the lost landscape of the drought-stricken American southwest.’ – The Daily Telegraph

About the Author: Madeleine Watts is a writer of fiction, stories, and essays. Her debut novel, The Inland Sea, was shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her writing has been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Believer, HEAT, The White Review, Literary Hub, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Irish Times, Bookforum, and Meanjin among others. She is the winner of the 2015 Griffith Review Novella Competition.

Madeleine grew up in Sydney, and sometimes Melbourne. After a decade living in New York, she is now based in Berlin.

Elegy, Southwest is her second novel.

04 Mar 2025
 

Elegy, Southwest: LONGLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD by Madeleine Watts ISBN 9781761153136