Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The second novel by the Australian writer Madeleine Watts, Elegy, Southwest, is astonishingly and chillingly prescient. A married couple in their twenties embark on a road trip beginning in Las Vegas and ending at the Grand Canyon. During intermittent spells of reception, news trickles in of wildfires across northern California and Los Angeles. Firefighters subsist on \u201cone-hour naps\u201d. The smoke lends sunsets an ominous hue. But Watts\u2019 foresight extends beyond impending climate catastrophe: standing outside the filmmaker David Lynch\u2019s LA home and hearing coughing, the protagonists Eloise and Lewis wonder: \u201cDoes he have a cold?\u201dThese unsettling parallels with the current news cycle are doubly effective in a novel concerned with the warning signs of tragedy. As in Watts\u2019 debut, The Inland Sea \u2014 which centred on a Sydney-based emergency services operator for whom those disasters seeped into her own existence \u2014 personal catastrophes run in tandem with broader scale calamities. Amid severe water shortages and dire treatment of undocumented migrants and the incarcerated, Watts captures a general state of imperilment.\u00a0By narrating Elegy, Southwest in the second person, Watts imbues her writing with a mournfulness from the outset. The voice of Eloise, a student researcher on transfer to the US, addresses the \u201cyou\u201d of her husband, who works for \u201cthe Foundation\u201d, an art conglomerate funding installations out in the desert. For Eloise\u2019s dissertation on the Colorado River and water scarcity, the pair rent a car and set out to circumnavigate its expanse \u2014 their only required stop-off a foundation project for which the partner of a deceased artist is digging an immense cavern in the sand, adorned with mirrors, providing visitors \u201ca unique experience of celestial time\u201d.Elegy, Southwest is a study of grieving \u2014 for what has passed already but also what one stands to lose. Through Eloise\u2019s voice, speaking in the past tense, we catch glimpses into an ominous future. (On the topic of marriage, she fleetingly says: \u201cPeople still were, then.\u201d) There is a touch of the confessional to Eloise\u2019s account. Gradually, it is revealed that the trip takes place one year after the death of Lewis\u2019s mother \u2014 \u201cthe worst thing that had ever happened to you, and us\u201d. Lewis is still reeling, vaping weed until unconscious and becoming increasingly drawn to dubious New Age methods of purging his pain.While wending through America\u2019s peculiar, apocalyptic landscapes, Eloise delicately weaves in different sources on bereavement, the desert and the dwindling Colorado River, from Elizabeth Bishop to Georgia O\u2019Keeffe. Beneath the density of her research, there is a sense of insufficiency, \u201cthe utter poverty of language in the face of calamity\u201d. Most interestingly, Watts suggests love itself is a form of sorrow, a \u201cdesire for so much else \u2014 rivers, pleasure boats, fish, the salt water of childhood\u201d. Like the natural landscape, Watts implies, love is precious and precarious.For all its melancholy, Watts\u2019 sophomore novel is shrewdly funny, its humour mostly flowing from its voyage into the weirdness of Americana. Detours and diversions include \u201cdate shakes\u201d, co-working spaces \u201cwhere llamas roamed free, and sometimes spat at you\u201d and the environmental activist and singer Katie Lee wandering naked through the Colorado River. Each phase of the journey is prefaced by a prose poem plotting its coordinates: \u201cEndangered Desert Tortoise\u201d; \u201cRoland Barthes Crying in the Boulangerie\u201d; \u201cAn Abortive Lunch\u201d. This is all underpinned by eerie echoes: A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack playing on a loop, every dog they meet being named Max.Watts covers a vast amount of territory, from allusions to Trump to meditations on colonialism. Like Megan Hunter, she anchors a story of climate crisis in the profoundly human, her style characterised by a grace and effortlessness. If there is a little of Rachel Cusk in her way of dancing through characters and ideas, Watts\u2019 voice feels more impassioned. This is a rare kind of writing where every page offers something to linger on, beautiful and devastating in equal measure.\u00a0Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts Pushkin Press \u00a318.99\/Simon & Schuster $27.99, 288 pagesJoin our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Caf\u00e9 and follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The second novel by the Australian writer Madeleine Watts, Elegy, Southwest, is astonishingly and chillingly prescient. A married couple in their twenties embark on a road<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":259975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-259974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259976,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259974\/revisions\/259976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}