Claire Vaye Watkins, Gold Fame Citrus: 'Between Hell and a hot place', book review

This dystopian first novel from a young American writer is accompanied by praise from across the pond, but I must say I found it very hard to get on with.

Gold Fame Citrus comes on the back of Watkins’s well-received book of short stories, Battleborn, and while it demonstrates some of the same linguistic tricks and structural experimentation as its predecessor, the longer form sees the author’s storytelling meander and drift.

It also felt somewhat clichéd, both in terms of the rather lightweight dystopia at the heart of the novel, and the depiction of the cult-like subcultures that exist within her invented world. The book is set in a future California without water.

Drought has ravaged the state and most people have gone, taken to refugee camps in northern and eastern states. Those left behind are either criminals, anarchists or other forms of outsider, scraping together a life of sorts among the sands and hot winds.

Luz and Ray are the focus of the narrative. Luz, a former model and childhood propaganda tool, is vacant and irresponsible, while Ray, an ex-army dude with hidden psychological pain, does all the survivalist stuff like finding food and shelter.

At a party of sorts, the pair encounter a neglected two-year-old girl whom they promptly adopt and care for, spurring them on to attempt leaving for a better life in the east.

But standing in their way is the great Amargosa Dune Sea, a gigantic, shifting desert that has already swallowed up countless towns and mountain ranges and is growing every moment.

The trio get separated and Luz and the child are rescued by an alternative community run by Levi, an apparently charismatic dowser who regards the Amargosa Sea as a source of life rather than a deadly wasteland.

There are moments of nice description and subtle, rhythmic prose, and Watkins does a decent job with her metaphorical wasteland. The deadness at the heart of the Amargosa Sea, its proximity to Los Angeles, and the word “fame” in the title of the book all suggest that this novel is an oblique commentary on that old chestnut, the American dream.

Watkins does have something interesting to say about our relationship to that, especially through Levi’s suggestion that the desert is life-giving rather than just a source of empty destruction.

But there is precious little jeopardy here, nothing really at stake, and there is a lot of rather ponderous introspection from all Watkins’s characters.

Luz’s later infatuation with Levi and Levi’s ideas for the future of the desert stretch credulity, while Ray’s brooding masculinity is very wearing. All in all, an apocalypse to forget.

Gold Fame Citrus, by Claire Vaye Watkins. Quercus £16.99