Elegy, Southwest

Ecological grief is often categorized as a form of ambiguous loss, because the feelings and memories of the environment are partly lost and partly not. Moreover, the magnitude of future loss is unknown. In her latest novel, Watts (The Inland Sea) sets a futile exploration for water in the deserts of Australia alongside her narrator’s self-destructive search for meaning in a sea of anxiety. Set in 2018, the narrative follows Eloise and Lewis, who are road-tripping through the southwestern part of the United States. Lewis is grieving the loss of his mother and tracking down a wayward work of land art, while Eloise is doing research for her dissertation on the historical depletion and control of the Colorado River. The novel employs both retrospective and real-time narration to underscore each character’s feelings of dispossession from the land, their own bodies, and love. Thematically, the book also addresses control of women’s bodies in parallel to the environment.