This month at Matilda Bookshop Book Club, we discussed the contemplative and quietly devastating, Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts. A couple, Eloise and Lewis, take a road trip through the American desert country of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, while researching the carving up of the Colorado River, and large-scale land art, respectively. The second person perspective lends the account of the road trip an elegiac tone, as Eloise writes from a future point, looking back over the journey into the emotional touchstones of a relationship crushed by grief. Watt's attendance to the immensely beautiful, and terrifyingly industrialised country the couple move through is breathtaking, especially as she documents the slow motion devastation of climate change. There were mixed reactions to this book among our readers. Some appreciated the slow burn and poetic digressions about art, and love, and deserts, while others felt disarmed by the detached second person voice, and worse, did not care for the self-indulgence/emotional repression of the main characters. After sharing our lasting visual/filmic impressions of the book with each other, we discussed elegy, Keats' negative capability, voice, rivers, dams, miscarriage, hands, cactus, grief, and responsibility to each other and our world. So while opinion varied, the discussion was deep and rich. MOLLY

Articles, reviews and interviews referenced/mentioned in the sessions:

TEN QUESTIONS WITH MADELEINE WATTS: Matilda Bookshop Highlight on Authors Series

'Drowning in grief: A tastefully minimal road-trip novel' by Kirsten Tranter in Australian Book Review

'Uncertainties, mysteries, doubts: Madeleine Watts takes an elegiac road trip through the American southwest' by Georgia Phillips in The Conversation

'Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts review – powerful, poignant and suffused with millennial dread' by James Bradley in The Guardian

Madeleine Watts: ‘Climate change should be in everyone’s writing right now’ by Briohny Doyle in The Guardian

The uneasy timeliness of ELEGY, SOUTHWEST interview by Nirica Srinivasan in Interlocutor Magazine

'On balancing growth and guarding against burnout' interview by The Creative Independent

Other books and films and artists mentioned:

Faithless by Alice Nelson (book)

The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts (book)

Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders (film)

Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni (film)

Dennis Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe and David Lynch

Thank you to all the recent newcomers to book club, and of course, our longtermers: you all contribute in making this a diverse celebration of books and shared reading.

Just beautiful books  |  matildabookshop.com.au