I don’t read many books set in the American Southwest and found this one incredibly moving. The landscape really complements the tone of the story. Lewis and Eloise’s relationship is heartbreaking and felt very real - I was both rooting for them and not but couldn’t stop reading.

Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts is a relatable and well written novel that captures feelings of love and loss very effectively.

I was drawn in by the beautiful cover and intriguing premise but this was super disappointing. For me, this was a challenge to invest in and slog through.

I was excited by the climate breakdown and geography themes; but, I couldn’t enjoy them because the sections were so info-dumpy and boring, like reading a textbook.
It was obviously throughly researched, it just doesn’t make for particularly interesting reading.

Emotional and hard hitting dog death in first section. Why is every single dog in this book named Max?

The narrative has a gross navel-gazey vibe with painfully boring characters. I hated the vacuous narrator, Eloise. None of the peripheral characters made a lasting impression. In a novel this character driven, I need to have interesting, complex, or likeable characters. The stream of consciousness style probably works better for a journal entry than a novel.

This novel also follows a trend I’m noticing where authors try to be edgy x literary: using gratuitous sex/bodily fluids/crass terms amid overwrought, meandering writing. There’s something so jarring about this style and I really don’t enjoy it.

Self important and try-hard writing style that didn’t work for me at all. The pacing is glacial and narrative jumps around chaotically no artful flow. At times, there’s jarringly poor sentence structure and flow too, with awkward and unnatural wording. Of course, there’s also no speech punctuation because of course there isn’t. 🙄

The story is occasionally impactful but mostly dry and overwrought. I came to dread picking this up and reading it made me cranky. It speeds up at 90% but it was too little, too late for this reader - I was beyond caring.