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The road trip from hell: Elegy, Southwest, by Madeleine Watts, reviewed

Watts skilfully conjures a sense of impending doom as a young couple’s expedition to the American Southwest is threatened by deadly fires sweeping through California

26 April 2025

9:00 AM

26 April 2025

9:00 AM

Elegy, Southwest Madeleine Watts

Pushkin Press, pp.288, 18.99

Throughout her quietly compelling second novel, Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts conjures a sense of trundling steadily towards disaster. The narrator, a young Australian woman called Eloise, is recounting a road trip that she and her husband Lewis took through the American Southwest in 2018 – while a deadly fire was sweeping through northern California.

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